Category Archives: History

Michael Wolff’s Trumpland tell-all, Fire and Fury, has set Washington ablaze

Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin: Michael Wolff, Chronicler of Chaos in Trumpland. (Listen or download, 53 minutes.)

“The man behind the book has gotten surprisingly little attention, even though it was partly Wolff’s position at the top of New York media’s social heap that won him Trump’s trust, and access to the White House. Alec set out to do a different Michael Wolff interview. At a live event at Manhattan’s Town Hall, audience-members learned about the Jewish kid from Jersey with a shoeleather reporter for a mom, who gave up on being a novelist to do big-money media deals – even as he wielded his poison pen against peers in the New York media elite. And Wolff lives up to his reputation as one of New York’s best conversationalists, giving answers by turns open, cantankerous, and very, very funny.”

If you prefer, you can also listen to the interview on YouTube.

This was published on 13 February, 2018, but I only listened to it tonight.

“Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge.”

The Guardian: Don’t panic! The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is back. “It’s the biggest thing to happen to the universe since the Vogons blew up Earth. Our writer grabs a babelfish and goes behind the scenes as the space satire returns.”

“The original cast has been reunited to record a new radio series of the intergalactic comedy that, from small beginnings in 1978 on Radio 4, grew into a juggernaut that spawned a TV series, a Disney film, a much-loved series of books, several stage shows and even a video game.
[…]
The new series combines unpublished material, dug out of Adams’ notebooks by archivist and superfan Kevin Jon Davies, and newer plotlines drawn from And Another Thing, Eoin Colfer’s book continuing the saga, which was commissioned by the Adams estate after the author’s sudden death at the age of just 49 in 2001.”

I’ve read the four-part trilogy and enjoyed the original radio play. Looking very forward to this!

Link via MetaFilter.

“Another person with a gun won’t necessarily help you.”

dangerousmeta!: “My favorite thing to do for people who believe ‘more guns’ is the answer, is to drive them to the graveyard in Cimarron, New Mexico. The original “Wild West.” Often held up as some sort of John Wayne version of perfect American society. Well, here’s that society, as reflected in the cemetery:

Everyone had guns.

And they shot everyone.

Men. Women. Children. Dear lord, they even SHOT THE TOWN PREACHER.”

The total number of school-children killed by bullets to date (as of February 1, 2018) is 218 school-children.

Add 17 to the total, which now rises to 235 (source).

Another school shooting in the USA. No need to link, it’s all over the internet. For this foreigner who has spent her whole life in a country were very few people have guns and where regulations are strict (and became even stricter after the Winnenden school shooting in 2009 in which 15 students were killed) it is still incomprehensible why the majority of US politicians (and citizens? voters?) still support the current status quo and the second amendment.

Garret proposes to take over the NRA. I wonder if that would work.

“We are a nation of second chances.” (President Obama)

Nation of Second Chances. “During his presidency, President Obama granted clemency to 1,715 people —
mostly nonviolent drug offenders serving sentences in federal prison — more than any other president in history. Through beautiful photos and powerful words, Nation of Second Chances tells their stories.”

Link via MetaFilter.

The “more than any other president in history” doesn’t seem to be quite correct though. Obama has granted clemency “more than any other president in recent history” is more exact, since Harry S. Truman pardoned, commuted or rescinded the convictions of 2,044 people, and before him Franklin D. Roosevelt granted 3,687 pardons in his four terms in office, while Barack Obama pardoned 212 people and commuted the sentences of a further 1,715 people, 1,927 people in all. (Source: Wikipedia, but the numbers seem to agree with those of the United States Department of Justice.)