Werner Herzog's Bear

I’m utterly uninterested in “debates” about whether AI can do things well. I wouldn’t care if it could. 1. It stole from me. 2. I prefer me having my job to a computer having it. 3. I don’t teach “with” Lockheed or Raytheon; why wld I teach with Anthropic or OpenAI?

Well back then I thought I was gonna be a lawyer! I am indeed a glutton for punishment.

By that time (age 16) I didn’t want to be a priest, but a couple years earlier I thought it was my most likely career.

As an altar boy I was such an assumed candidate for the priesthood that my parish invited me to the elevation of the new bishop. (The other altar boy they invited is now a priest.)

A war that isn't a war, documented with videos that may or may not be real, funded by elected leaders who are neither for nor against it, is the most dystopian thing that's happened in my lifetime

There are many contenders here, but maybe the most depressing thing about being alive right now is that no one remembers anything that happened more than about a day ago.

Blame what you want - social media, the internet writ large, AI - but a couple years ago might as well be the Middle Ages.

“Crimes against peace” was a charge at Nuremberg for a reason.

Thinking about scores of people dead on the bottom of the Indian Ocean because of a war the aggressor can’t even find a consistent reason why they started it.

I know that the people who need to read this aren’t here, but here goes:

Rules of engagement aren’t for the enemy. They’re for you. They’re for your soldiers when they’re captured or wounded. They’re for your civilians when they’re in range of the enemy. They’re for your allies, to reassure.

Hegseth today: We don't actually have any clear purpose or guideposts or objectives in mind, the metrics are shifting...but "we are just getting started."

Yikes.

i'm taking a brave stance that may get me canceled: there is no reason for the pervert glasses to exist

In the Monkees movie Head there’s a part where they’re soldiers and Peter says he’s going to run forward and Mike Nesmith laconically says “see that you do.” I say it all the time when someone says they’re about to do something.

is it a good sign when the uniform response to a classified briefing is basically everyone immediately doing a vertical video about it in which they spend most of the time screaming that we’re all gonna die?

And this will in no way destabilize Iraq, Turkey, or Syria I’m sure

The thing with racists is that they assume only white people have agency and are thus ill equipped when it turns out that other people actually can do things they don’t expect.

The easiest analytical assumption to make whenever Trump does something is that he hasn't thought it through at all. And yet everytime commentators contort themselves into believing there's some kind of strategy.

When we talk about Baby Boomers not getting off the stage: In 1997, the US president was born in 1946.

In 2007, the US president was born in 1946.

In 2017, the US president was born in 1946.

And next year in 2027? The US president will have been born in 1946.

Netanyahu won't stop, Iran and its proxies won't stop, and I imagine millions of Shia Muslims who are watching their clerics getting merc'ed won't stop either.

The stock market tanking might be the salvation we need to get Trump to stop this, but I honestly don't think anymore that him stopping means others will stop, too.

Hearing someone rave about Dubai is always a red flag to me. They're practically screaming "I am a morally vacant, shallow person with no interest in culture."

guys! GUYS! did you know??? we're all going to DIE one day???

That statue, which was cast back in 1961, was modeled on 1950s Texas Rangers – as in the law enforcement Texas Rangers – Captain Jay Banks. Since it's unveiling 65 years ago it has spent most of its life at Love Field in Dallas. But then in 2020 it was removed and placed in storage. Why? Because Captain Jay Banks was a racist cop who made it his mission to stop schools from integrating. This is an excerpt from the 2020 book, Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers by Doug Swanson, which describes' Banks' role in efforts to keep schools in Texas racially segregated in defiance of the United States Supreme Court's 1954 decision, Brown v. Board of Education: Then there is the form and face of the statue itself. This dates to 1956, when the NAACP, backed with a court order, attempted to integrate the high school in Mansfield, about 30 miles southwest of Dallas. White residents erupted in fury, so Gov. Allan Shivers dispatched the Rangers. But unlike state police in other Southern racial hotspots, the Rangers in Mansfield did not escort black students past howling mobs of white supremacists. They had been sent instead to keep the black children out of a white school.

The commanding Ranger on the scene was Sgt. E.J. “Jay” Banks. A wire service photo showed him casually leaning against a tree outside Mansfield High. To his left, above the school’s entrance, was a dummy in blackface, hanging from a noose. Nearby a white mob had assembled. Some carried signs that threatened death for anyone attempting to integrate the school. Banks saw no need to remove the effigy or disperse the mob. “They were just ‘salt of the earth’ citizens,” he later wrote. “They were concerned because they were convinced that someone was trying to interfere with their way of life.” Blacks were so intimidated that none attempted to enroll at Mansfield. Several days later, Gov. Shivers ordered Banks and a few other Rangers to Northeast Texas, because African-Americans wished to take classes at all-white Texarkana Junior College, a public institution. Again the Rangers’ job was to stop black students from enrolling. As at Mansfield, a mob of white men gathered outside the school. An 18-year-old woman and a 17-year-old boy, both black, arrived by cab and began to walk toward the college. The mob blocked their path. Some surrounded the 17-year-old and kicked him, while others threw gravel. The Rangers watched it happen and did nothing except threaten to arrest the two students. That wire service photo of Banks in front of the school with the Black person hung in effigy can be seen at the top of today's newsletter.

The statue was removed from public view in 2020 in the wake of that book about the Rangers being published. This occurred at the same time that statues of Confederates, Klansmen, racists, and segregationists were removed all over the country following the murder of George Floyd. But now the Texas Rangers Baseball Club, knowing full well the history of the statue, its subject, and its removal, and knowing that multiple municipal institutions decided it was inappropriate for public display, is happy to put that statue up in a public concourse at a major league baseball stadium. When I learned of this yesterday afternoon I contacted Major League Baseball and asked the following questions: Is Major League Baseball aware of the history of the "One Riot, One Ranger" statue and its subject, Jay Banks? Is Major League Baseball aware that Love Field and the City of Dallas removed the statue and put it in storage in 2020 after Banks' involvement in attempting to keep schools segregated in the 1950s came to light? Does Major League Baseball condone one of its Clubs erecting a previously-removed statue of a staunch segregationist at its ballpark?; and Does Major League Baseball have any comment regarding the discomfort that will be felt by Black fans when confronted with the statue of a segregationist at Globe Life Field? I did not receive a response. I'm going to assume that the league's silence on this means that it wholly condones the Rangers putting up the "One Riot, One Ranger" statue despite its sordid and extraordinarily well-reported history.

Yesterday the Texas Rangers erected a statue of a segregationist cop at Globe Life Field. A statue that was removed from public property in 2020 because of its racist history. @mlb.com has refused to comment. www.cupofcoffeenews.com/cup-of-coffe...

And of course, Carlos Alomar on guitar was so crucial to this as well as Bowie's stuff of the period.

As a sidenote, George Murray's bass on this and Bowie's Berlin albums of the era is so damn good and he deserves a lot more praise than he gets.

Well I just broke the glass and put on Iggy Pop's The Idiot, one of my all time dark night of the soul records.

Yuuuuup!

When you let the war genie out of the bottle you can't just put it back. Everyone in August of 1914 and April of 1861 thought things would be short. Sometimes you get a Spanish-American War, but a lot of the time you get a Vietnam.

The war broke me. I have to be able to process this without ranting to my friends and family all the time. I will have to transition to Plan B, which was no sweets. If I give up coffee that will be just too cruel to my family.

Well today I’m thinking this all could go in several, unpredictable directions and I think just about anything could happen. Wheeee!!!!

I got a rash, man.