I’ve been a heavy user of Facebook for many years, but I’m going to step back for a little while.

Facebook has too much power, and doesn’t wield that power wisely. And also Facebook is just plain difficult to use.

I believe those two things are related. Facebook doesn’t want you using Facebook for maximum enjoyment and usefulness. It wants you to maximize your time on Facebook, and that means getting you angry and frustrated.

I’ll continue posting to Facebook for work and for the La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club because those are my responsibilities. But I’m looking for opportunities to pull back from Facebook and this seems like one of them.

Also, I’ll check in occasionally to see what other people are saying.

And I may be back. For now, just taking a break to see how it feels.

Ex-Reagan adviser nails why white evangelicals flock to Trump in devastating takedown of fake Christians (Raw Story)

White evangelicals love Trump so much because they believe he fights for them – they see Trump as their attack dog, says Peter Wehner, an anti-Trump conservative, evangelical, and former advisor to Reagan and George W. Bush.

They are fools. Trump will eventually betray them, like Hitler did with the German conservatives who supported him at first, believing they could control him.

Peanuts: Public Enemy No. 1? (Science Vs podcast): Peanut allergy in children has been on the rise since the 1990s. But a popular candy could be making Israel exempt from the problem.

Journalist Predicts SCOTUS, ‘Under Strain,’ Will Move Slowly On Abortion (Fresh Air podcast): The Supreme Court is likely to move slowly in overturning the right to abortion, but it’ll get there. “It’s not hard to write a decision striking down Roe…. All you need to do is to say it’s built on quicksand.”

New trailer for Star Trek: Picard. Engage!

[At Comic-Con]

HIM: “I’d like to stay and talk now but I need to rush to a panel about time travel.”

ME: [interrupting a conversation between strangers] “Why rush? No hurry! You can make it to the panel YESTERDAY!”

HIM: [blank stare]

My best material is wasted.

John Green reviews scratch ‘n’ sniff stickers and the Indianapolis 500. (The Anthropocene Reviewed podcast)

Via

📺 We watched the first episode of the new season of “Veronica Mars” tonight. Holy cuss, it’s dark. I don’t remember the first iteration of the show being this dark. Though it was about the sex murder of a teen-age girl so maybe my memory is selective.

Where’s Weevil?

Good news, Marshmallows! Veronica Mars season 4 was supposed to be available next week. But it’s available now! (The Verge)

Felice Cohen lives in a 90-square-foot “microstudio” in Manhattan. The toaster-oven stores bananas.

2010 video – I wonder whether she’s moved?

For Comic-Con weekend, it’s time to re-watch Galaxy Quest (The Verge)

The Thermians are essentially fans writ large, driven to emulate the admirable principles that inform the series, while remaining blind to the flaws of its extremely human creators. Free from cynicism, they wholeheartedly embrace the virtues of a show that’s opened up possibilities they’d never previously imagined.”

That’s the appeal of science fiction and fantasy at its best. It routinely tries to imagine how heroes act. It asks readers to ask themselves: How should a good person act in times of adversity?

A 1960s Bar Mitzvah photo . Via

Did not age well. Via

Silvia and the Cats: Cats have colonized the place in Rome where Julius Caesar was assassinated more than 2,000 years ago. Recently, archeologists launched a war on the cats to claim the place for history. The cats won. (This Is Love podcast)

How White Identity Politics Won The Republican Civil War: Tim Alberta’s new book “American Carnage” documents “the Republican Civil War,” a decade-plus struggle over whether the Republican Party would be built around white identity politics or try to reach out to a changing America. Alberta is a guest on The Ezra Klein Show. Spoiler alert: White American politics won out.

The laws of the future! Real-world law is becoming science fictional, grappling with questions of surveillance and digital policing, according to Cyrus Farivar, a journalist who covers law and technology for NBC News, and guest on the Our Opinions Are Correct podcast. Farivar is author of Habeas Data, a book about landmark privacy cases. Also: Why lawyers love Star Trek.

Starship Enterprise model on a Los Angeles street, 1964 & 2014

I’m reading “The Long Way To a Small Angry Planet,” I’m halfway through and just not into it. Should I quit? Does it get better? So far it’s 209 pages of talking and eating space food.

December 1940. Alexandria, Louisiana. “Construction workers from Camp Livingston eating and hanging around new cafe by entrance of camp.”

Microsoft Q4 FY19: Why is Azure ‘slowing’ and Windows growing?

Trump says seriously looking into Amazon’s JEDI Pentagon contract: “While Trump didn’t cite Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos by name Thursday, the billionaire executive has been a constant source of frustration for the president.“