“Kumbaya” is a pretty bad folk song but it does not deserve the abuse it’s taken.

We’re going to war with Venezuela for the same reasons we went to war with Iraq. Oil, the president is legit a bad man, and handwaving about terrorism. We risk the same outcome.

A main argument of Trump’s 2015 Presidential campaign, which helped get him elected, that the Iraq war was a stupid, bipartisan blunder. And he was right! It left us with a mess that we didn’t clean up for nearly 20 years. We’re still paying hundreds of billions of dollars per year for that fiasco. And yet Trump, the stupidest and most incompetent man who ever occupied the White House, says, “That was great! Let’s do it again!”

An ancient Roman epitaph for a dog.

I continued reading “Lord of the Rings” last night. Frodo and his hobbit scooby-gang have left Bree. We’re getting a lot more description of landscape and also talk of the Black Riders. That name did not age well. Strider recited an interminably long poem about an elf woman and human man who fell in love. She was immortal and she died. I think. I didn’t follow what I was reading too well; I was falling asleep by then. I started thinking that Carl Hiaasen had a new book out a few months ago and I would really like to read that. Then I decided to call it a night on LoTR and read something else, but I was too tired for that so we just watched a little TV and went to bed.

Karoline Leavitt says Trump calling a woman reporter “piggy” is an example of him being “respectful” and journalists should appreciate that.

I’m sure that she and her boss, the sexual predator, pedophile and convicted criminal Donald J. Trump, will find it respectful when I say that they’re despicable idiots and that they will appreciate it.

I recently resolved to stop keeping empty boxes and to throw out the empty boxes that I already have.

But today I received shoes from Zappos — a box inside a box — and those boxes are too good to throw out. Sturdy, clean, regular and the perfect size for … something. I’ll figure it out.

Today in America’s rapid decline: Trump is literally threatening death to lawmakers who reminded serving military of their obligation to disobey unlawful orders. These lawmakers are themselves military veterans — Trump had a medical deferrment because, he claims, he had bonespurs.

The CDC changed its website to include lies about alleged vaccine dangers.

And the U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify swastikas and nooses as hate symbols.

Amazon Prime is making a new Stargate series! Sweet!

Trump Praises Saudi Prince and Dismisses Question About Killing of Journalist

“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” Mr. Trump told the journalist, Mary Bruce of ABC News, later referring to her query as “a horrible, insubordinate, and just a terrible question.”

KBS must have been uncomfortable about Mary Bruce’s question. You know who else was uncomfortable? Jamal Khashoggi, as he was being murdered and dismembered by Saudi agents.

Town’s Huge Christmas Mural Was Generated Using AI, Resulting in Ghastly Chthonic Horrors. “This mural has gone up in Kingston, ostensibly for Christmas but AI has ensured it’s actually to celebrate the return of our dark lord Cthulhu."

A 79-year-old man who was born in a refugee camp is doing hard time in Alligator Alcatraz after 70 years in the U.S. “He fell out of his wheelchair and they left him on the cell floor for hours.”

Here’s another photo of the borzoi dog I saw at the park the other day, caught in the act of shaking himself.

OpenAI is cutting off service to a toymaker after teddy bears started telling children how to play with matches and talking about sexual fetishes. Why didn’t I ever have cool toys like that when I was a kid?

Suddenly Frodo noticed that a strange-looking weather-beaten man, sitting in the shadows near the wall, was also listening intently to the hobbit-talk. He had a tall tankard in front of him, and was smoking a long-stemmed pipe curiously carved. His legs were stretched out before him, showing high boots of supple leather that fitted him well, but had seen much wear and were now caked with mud. A travel-stained cloak of heavy dark-green cloth was drawn close about him, and in spite of the heat of the room he wore a hood that overshadowed his face; but the gleam of his eyes could be seen as he watched the hobbits.

Here’s Strider. He is the coolest man in the Prancing Pony — faded Levi’s, biker boots and leather jacket, smoking unfiltered Camels. He is wearing aviator sunglasses inside the dark bar; on anybody else they’d look affected and silly but on him they make him look even cooler. He is played by 1980s Sam Elliott.

Also: I can’t get over that there’s a guy in Middle Earth named “Bob.”

The hobbits have arrived at the Prancing Pony, which I picture as like the Bada Bing in The Sopranos. “Paulie Walnuts” could be a hobbit name.

When I was a kid, I thought quicksand, evil twins and amnesia would be bigger deals than they turned out to be.

I had to re-learn to read books in 2023, after 20+ years of doing more and more of my reading on the Internet.

I don’t trust newfangled simultaneous collaborative editing tools. Two people editing the same doc at the same time? It’s witchcraft!

Or electricity. I don’t trust electricity.

The United States is in the moment after Wile E. Coyote runs off a cliff, but before he looks down.

I keep getting spam at work with the subject line “EMPLOYEES FROM HELL.” I feel seen.

Ezra Klein: How Tucker Carlson is helping modern Nazis — “Groypers” — go mainstream in the Republican Party.

To call them Nazis is not hyperbole. These guys see Jews as enemies within America, and are not shy about saying so. No dog-whistling here.

We paid El Salvador to torture, abuse, and rape completely innocent Venezuelans so that [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio, [White House deputy chief of staff] Stephen Miller, and Donald Trump could claim they were tough on immigrants.

— Heather Cox Richardson

The economy is faltering and Americans know it.

Bloomberg reports that 62% of Americans they polled say the cost of everyday items has climbed over the past month and that 55% of employed Americans say they’re worried about losing their job. It also notes, as CNBC economic commenter Carl Quintanilla pointed out, that international stocks are outperforming the U.S. S&P stock index by the widest margin in 16 years. Yesterday the University of Michigan consumer confidence survey hit its lowest reading in 65 years.

— Heather Cox Richardson