Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, August 4, 2025
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31 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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BlueSky.
It gets worse for Texas and the country:
Texas House Democrats flee the state in bid to block GOP’s proposed congressional map
In response, the increasingly despotic Greg Abbott:
Gov. Greg Abbott threatens Texas House Democrats with removal from office for fleeing state
I believe they are just making up rules at this point. But will use the State Police and National Guard to enforce them.
Before anyone gets up on their high horse, this was in the making well before Trump and Hegseth.
This is kind of woo-woo but interesting. I suspect the far right Christian Nationalists would be objecting to the spiritualism of it all.
Army releases spirituality fitness guide and battle book
Not cheery, but I can’t fault his conclusions.
‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse
[…] “I’m pessimistic about the future,” he says. “But I’m optimistic about people.” Kemp’s new book covers the rise and collapse of more than 400 societies over 5,000 years and took seven years to write. The lessons he has drawn are often striking: people are fundamentally egalitarian but are led to collapses by enriched, status-obsessed elites, while past collapses often improved the lives of ordinary citizens.
Today’s global civilisation, however, is deeply interconnected and unequal and could lead to the worst societal collapse yet, he says. The threat is from leaders who are “walking versions of the dark triad” – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism – in a world menaced by the climate crisis, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and killer robots.
@Scott:
They should all fly to Cancun and see if El Taco and his viceroy dare to make it an international incident.
I hope @Ken_L won’t mind, but I’m porting his comment from yesterday to this thread.
Of course he’s right, when you don’t have answers the temptation is to make them up, to fantasize, and then move into that fantasy world. Early humans were frightened by lightning and needed some way to come to terms with the seemingly random attacks from the sky. So they anthropomorphize, putting a frame around their fear. Dogs are also afraid of lightning, but they don’t need an explanation, they know they’ll be safe under the bed, and that’s why there have been no canine holy wars.
Now, back in pre-history, Og and his wife Nog, did not have the wherewithal to study lightning. We do. We have the tools to understand just about anything, given time and focus. But we do not have the tools to make life meaningful in some transcendent way. Or, we have seen the answer and just don’t like it. Because our purpose as a species is the same as the purpose of a cockroach, a fungus or a bacterium: to survive long enough to reproduce. If you have had offspring and they have reached the age of reproduction, you are no longer really useful as far as nature is concerned. (Aside from continuing to carry your children on your health plan).
Personally, I am fine accepting that there is no transcendent ‘meaning of life.’ I don’t know quite why it’s a problem for so many people. Life knows what the meaning of life is: life. There can be no transcendent meaning to life because our only perspective is subjective and when we demand that life itself have a meaning – other than its obvious meaning – what we really mean is that it must have a meaning that places us at the center. We are tiresome narcissists insisting that we alone, among all the millions of life forms, have some greater purpose. Dogs don’t do that which, again, is why there are no canine holy wars.
For me, Michael, its my cell phone plan. The law is kind enough to remove them from my health plan at age 26.
You have a very narrow definition of “meaning of life.” I categorize human knowledge in two spheres. First is scientific knowledge and it mostly accretes over time, though we clearly lose large tranches of it from time to time, like how exactly to build a pyramid without power tools.
The other is knowledge of ourselves and I would say we peeked in that field thousands of years ago and, even though that knowledge isn’t widely held, it has been persistent and relatively unchanged. It has be focused through different religious and cultural prisms and many of those prisms have other widely detrimental aspects. But a general knowledge that life has meaning and can be used to accomplish something for yourself and those around you in the here and now is pretty persistent. For those who can figure it out, it can be pretty helpful.
@Michael Reynolds:
@Joe:
There’s no purpose or meaning to the universe, no matter how much we want there or need it to be.
@Kathy: and why should there be? As Harry Nilsson said, you don’t have to have a point to have a point.
Someone at work brought in an espresso maker.
I spent a few minutes figuring it out. You know, basket, scoop, tamper, water reservoir, etc. Then I tried to make a double. I was concerned the Oaxaca coffee I have left is not ground for espresso, but I figured the flavor would be ok.
It came out cold.
Ok. Back home, I spent some minutes online looking for the manual for that model. I couldn’t find it. I didn’t have the model number, and had no desire to look at all of Oster’s cryptically labeled manuals to see which one it was. I figured I’d check the number out today at work and look up the manual.
Of course I could have asked the coworker who brought it, but what’s the fun in that?
While looking for the number, I noticed under the selector knob the following “wait for green light to turn on before turning the knob.”
Oh! it needs to heat up the water first!
Along he same lines, I made roasted chicken breasts. They came out rather well, and were easy to semi-slice and debone afterward. I used the drippings to make gravy, into which I drowned some fries. All well and good.
But I later thought the chicken could use some kind of sauce. I thought on and off about it for some time, before it hit me perhaps the gravy should go on the chicken next time….
Actually I froze about half a breast’ worth of meat. I plan to shred it later for chilaquiles.
@Michael Reynolds:
As a collective group, we have the tools to attempt to answer many questions — there are experts in every field, from mixology to molecular biology after all. But, as individuals we are far more limited.
As an individual you might master mixology and molecular biology, and start formulating your own experiments to advance the field or even just confirm that existing theories match empirical outcomes. But you can’t do all of that, and do the same with East European history, psychology, climate change and the mating habits of porcupines. There are limits to what an individual can do.
So, we’re right back to Og and Nog listening to Zog spin tales about lightning and porcupines. Or medieval serfs in church listening to the priest intone about the questionable interior design choices involving a massive sculpture of a man who has been crucified. Or watching Carl Sagan describe the Meat Planet in tones of reverence.
But in many ways it’s worse. There are far more other sources of information who will tell us that lightning is caused by charged particles or something, porcupines aren’t real, there is no God but Allah, and that the Carl Sagan “Meat Planet” video has been altered. And something terrible about Jews.
And maybe we’re good at picking out who to trust, and so we think lightning has something to do with clouds and electricity, porcupines are real, Zoroastrianism is where it’s at, and that the Carl Sagan “Meat Planet” video is mid-1970s astrophysics that has yet to be fully supplanted.
But there’s still an assault on every side, that the individual has to be constantly wary of, trying to become a source of trust, and we’re open minded people so we should do our own research. And it turns out the “porcupines are real” guy is also saying that the Jew Doctors don’t want you to drink Coca-Cola, and the nice woman who tells you that wizards shit themselves in public and then magic away the mess is also telling you that men are getting sex changes to go into women’s bathrooms and dominate the women’s bathroom sports.
We, as a society and a species, might be able to make progress answering big questions about physics or climate, or phrenology, but we as individuals are fucked, and that spreads like a disease through the species.
The vast majority of people have a God shaped hole in them, looking for something that will fit into it. And whatever does becomes a trusted source. And the dry rationalism of science does not fill that God shaped hole.
Marx famously said that religion is the opium of the masses, but it can also be the methadone, or the meth.
It’s more of a set of behaviors than a purpose.
Get a pack of wild dogs hungry enough, and they will tear each other to pieces. Animals behave like, well, animals.
You’re thinking of domesticated and socialized animals — there are no great labradoodle conflicts, but that’s because labradoodles aren’t wild.
——
That Carl Sagan “Meat Planet” video is a work of genius.
ETA: the careful breeding of tame and docile dogs is really just eugenics applied to wolves, isn’t it?
US man stabbed bakery owners over sandwich bought years ago
It’s not funny, but it’s very funny.
Knowing nothing about the Florida Mayonnaise incident, I’m kind of on the employee’s side. I’m not saying it was right, but it was probably understandable.
I stumbled across this Substack, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Terrifying Theory of Stupidity.
Sound familiar?
@Scott:
@Kathy:
A couple of points:
(1 ) I hope they were smart enough to purchase burn phones.
(2) Cancun? That’s Ted Cruz’s getaway when the Texas Power Grid fails.
I recommend Canada, avoiding Alberta, the ‘Texas of Canada,’ and Ted was born in Calgary.
@Gustopher: I don’t think this is what people who describe Falling Down as ahead of its time usually have in mind.
RE the BLS flap:
For context – ADP also reports jobs added or lost by months, the difference is that ADP uses the actual payroll numbers for their 460,000 clients and excludes government;
Top line ADP reports 37,000 jobs added in May 2025 (BLS’s final revision for May is 19,000 jobs added)
For June ’25 ADP reports 33,000 jobs LOST (BLS’s second estimate is 14,000 jobs added)
Trump is gonna target ADP !
@Kathy:
If it’s really an espresso maker, it should also be building up pressure, which separates espresso from regular coffee. I’m surprised anything came out without the required pressure, since it has to force its way through the packed grounds.
(I think the above is correct. I used to be into espresso and have a decent maker, but I’ve long since fallen back to drip coffee as part of my slowly giving up on life.)
I’m still basically on hiatus here. I’m just dropping in for a moment.
@Michael Reynolds: is right. Life is pointless and meaningless.
It’s been exactly 108 days since my last suicide attempt. The only thing remarkable about that for me is that it’s my only suicide attempt that I know the exact date of.
I spent the night of 98 on a small beach in Ibiza, Spain. I stared out into the Mediterranean sea and wondered if that’s the body of water that holds the most dead humans. For thousands of years, humans have been wandering up to its shores and drowning. They built cities and civilizations and wandered out onto it and drowned. A never ending tide of humanity constantly drowning in its waters.
I felt them singing as I danced at UNVRS, Hi, Pacha, Amnesia, Pacha, and Hi. Ibiza was lovely. The people were so nice.
@reid:
I don’t know how home espresso machines work. I had an older one I got in 2005 or 2006. It also made drip coffee. It had two reservoirs, one for each type. The one for espresso had a heavy duty threaded cap, with a printed admonition that it should be screwed on tight. So I suppose it built up pressure.
Anyway, I tried it again just now. It definitely heats up the water first… I need to work out the proportions. It has two tiny baskets for grounds, one shallow and one deep. I’ll try the shallow one next time. The double I made felt more like a triple…
@becca:
All the way back in elementary school, I recall having visited the natural history museum several times (I wonder what it’s like now). In one area they had a simple (and simplistic) representation of the solar system done in acrylic with backlighting. The Sun as in the lower left corner (only 1/4 or 1/2 of it was depicted), and planets stretched out on a 45 degree line to the upper right corner. Each one letting the backlight through its translucent surface. Thing is the background was black and opaque, but had thousands (or maybe hundreds) or tiny pinpoints where light shone through.
This left me with the impression at a very early age that stars were scattered all over between the Sun and Pluto.
Of course this is wrong. Along the way I corrected this view, either at school or through my own reading. But for some time, maybe years, I knew stars were small things, like asteroids*, scattered all over the place.
Before there was science, or even natural philosophy, people have been looking for the purpose and meaning of existence. And most have yet to correct their view.
In fairness, some questions are valid. Why is there something rather than nothing? How much can science find out? Are we smart enough to learn it? Etcetera.
*Funny thing, the word asteroid derives from Greek for “star-like”. As the early ones showed through telescopes as pinpoints of light, like stars.
@Beth: Ibiza’s straggots instead of Euroqueer staples Whole Festival, Milkshake Festival, Berlin Pride, Köln Pride, or Amsterdam Pride?
America, explain.
Where’s DOGE? I think I found some waste/fraud/abuse/general stupidity:
This timeline is EXHAUSTING. And dumb. The dumbest.
@gVOR10:
Stupidity does not exclude malice, alas.
See the pile of filth in human shape currently sitting at he Resolute desk.
@Jen:
Actually that’s not entirely without merit. Lunar day lasts aprox. 14 Earth days, but so does lunar night. During daytime, solar panels work great. not only are there no clouds, there won’t even be much dust or dirt, as there’s no atmosphere to stir it up. But at night there’s no sunlight at all (this may vary at the poles). Batteries are an option, but so is a nuclear reactor*.
The problem is that a high pressure water reactor, what most nuclear power plants in use today are, is a bit problematic on a world where water is scarce, and people need it in order not to die. So you’d want something exotic like a molten salt reactor, or a liquid sodium cooled reactor.
I’m more concerned about this from the link:
I fail to see the connection, or how such a “keep out” zone could be enforced.
And:
So, how much money has the ISS produced through its existence? There are tons and tons of useful scientific research done on it, albeit a lot of it is how weightlessness affects human physiology, but I know of no commercial developments, like those promised on the heady days when the first Shuttles were launched. Certainly no one has set up any kind of manufacturing operation in orbit (the costs don’t make sense).
In other words: no one is going to invest billions to launch a space station to conduct basic scientific research with few, if any, practical applications and no return on investment.
*At that, be grateful they’re not talking about coal burning power plants on the Moon. Yes, they’d need oxygen, but lunar regolith is rather rich in oxygen. Surely you just shove some dirt along with the coal and it will burn forever 😀
Since we’re discussing stupidity, the State Department will institute a $15,000 “visa bond.”
The piece states it will apply to people from countries with am overstay rate of 10% or higher, which are mostly African countries. The piece does not give a list. It does say “Tourists and business travelers would receive their bonds back when they depart the US, are naturalized as a citizen or die”
Yeah, right.
In the second place, if it’s intended to work as surety bond, then they should let insurers and other bond issuers handle it. Which would make matters very complicated, but would let tourists and business travelers from the targeted countries visit the US at a more reasonable price. How many pele do you figure have $15 grand they can do without for a week or two while they take a vacation or visit customers or suppliers?
But in the first place, many people who intend to overstay their visa who lack an extra $15,000, will enter informally and save the money.
Sure, it may deter some, make others enter through other channels, and it will deter tourists and business travelers a lot more.
It’s not the degree of paranoia, but how stupid it is.
Short interview with one William Beach, BLS commissioner in the second half of the first Taco term.
Salient, the BLS commissioner is not involved in gathering employment data, nor in preparing the numbers. As per the interview:
I didn’t know this, but it makes perfect sense. The commissioner is a political appointee, while the rest of the agency itself is made of career employees. So in a serous government, you don’t want the executive’s agent to put their thumb on the scale.
In El Taco’s government, or what passes for one….
I’m not even suggesting El Taco fired the BLS commissioner so he could rig the numbers. It’s quite clear and out in the open he shot the messenger and did his projection and gave the real reason: the report makes him look bad (that’s his natural state and you’d think he should be used to it by now; on the other hand, he may have fired all White House mirrors without telling anyone).
But it’s more than extremely likely the numbers will be cooked from now on.
@DK:
I missed London Trans Pride too. It was mostly because I’ve wanted to go there for years. Clubs, raves, bars, and parties also bring me joy and safety. Walking in to Pacha just felt like home. It’s a place I just understand. UNVRS felt just like Radius back home.
I’m going to continue to spiral until I find a club and a crew here in London.
@Beth:
At the hundred day mark, you deserved cake and ice cream. A little party perhaps.
(Not trying to make inappropriate lightness — mental illness sucks and I’m glad mine is just anxiety these days)
How would you measure it? Per square mile? I think any large body of water like the Mediterranean is going to have pretty low numbers just because of how much isn’t close to land. By raw numbers, I’d have to assume the Pacific, just because of how much coastline abuts it. But the slave trade probably pushes up the Atlantic numbers — are we talking dead humans, or specifically humans who drowned?
I briefly considered the whole Out Of Africa human migration, but given that the population is so much larger now than any previous point in history, I’m guessing it’s a rounding error. Even if we include Neanderthals and other species of humans.
I think rivers are probably the highest dead humans per square mile. Very thin, fast moving, could pull someone under. No idea which river to point to though.
Actually, I take it all back. Somewhere there’s a small backyard pool that was the place of two accidental drownings. Maybe a bathtub.
And by cubic meter of water, I think anywhere someone drowned in their own vomit has to be the winner.
ETA: I may have completely missed the melancholy beauty of contemplating how many bodies are somewhere.
Hoosier Family Values: Indiana Lieutenant Governor’s office creating deep fake porn of legislator’s wife.
https://www.24sight.news/p/topless-deepfake-video-roils-indiana?utm_medium=ios
I think it’s remarkable, downright wonderful, that humans have a yearning for meaning. And a capacity to seek and find it.* We might even be unique in this respect.
*I’m more in the Yalom camp wrt searching and finding meaning. By which I mean, it’s foolhardy to search for it because one will not find it by searching. Rather, one must engage outside of oneself (in an anti-narcissistic manner) in order to be found by meaning.
Why am I even attempting this explanation, when I can defer to a wise and gentle man:
@Kathy: When we’re citing expense as a reason to strip away basic government duties like caring for the poor, building a reactor on the moon is entirely without merit.
@Beth:
That’s exactly how I see the Mediterranean: layers of bones under gorgeous waters. You think it’s tragic, I agree, but I also think it’s funny.
I think we make a choice in our lives to see existence as tragedy or comedy. That’s more of a choice for some people than for others, obviously, some people’s lives are horror shows. But most of us have a choice, a fork in the road.
Earnest people, people who walk the tragic path see humor as foolish. I see it in reverse. If you choose to define life as tragedy that is the foolish choice. Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. Is that tragic or absurd? Framing life as absurd doesn’t alter, or attempt to alter, the facts. Murder, torture, rape, starvation, disease, it’s all still there. It’s when you really begin to grasp the horror that you see why humor is not a frill but a necessity.
Macbeth is a tragedy, but only if you want it to be. “Out, out damn spot,” works even better in a Bug Bunny cartoon. “A tale told by an idiot,” is a set-up for a punch line. “Fair is foul and foul is fair,” is absurdism. Isn’t that the opening to Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on first?” routine. “Is this a dagger which I see before me?” Nate Bargatze could use that line leading into a story about eating at a fancy restaurant.
Don’t be sad, be mad, anger is easier to control. Don’t be earnest, earnest is vulnerable, humor is a suit of armor. I could easily re-frame my early life as tragedy, but why the fuck would I do that when it’s so clearly a joke?