"The Son" by Philipp Meyer

A damn good novel about four generations of a Texas family. Meyer details Comanche customs as well or better than "Empire of the Summer Moon"; his portrayal of the Mexican-American 'war" in South Texas in the early 1900's, and the Texas oil barons is as good as any history I have read while placing the context in a page turning novel. Highly recommended. Note: Skip the AMC series. It is another story altogether. It's not worth the time.

Even if God existed, to say he loved the human race was preposterous. It was just as likely the opposite; it was just as likely he was systematically deceiving us. To think that an all-powerful being would make a world for anyone but himself, that he might spend all his time looking out for the interests of lesser creatures, it went against all common sense. The strong took from the weak, only the weak believed otherwise, and if God was out there, he was just as the Greeks and Romans had suspected: a trickster, an older brother who spent all his time inventing ways to punish you. Meyer (2013). p. 505

The cotton men had burned their own buildings to bring us into the war and before the sun came up the next day, their newspapers were blaming escaped slaves and Yankees, whose next step would be to burn all of Texas, right after they got done raping all the white women. Meyer (2013). p. 439

My old flip phone and bare internet look better every day ...Maybe the internet needs to go...

That would be a far worst experience for those viewing my feed...

The day after I set it up, it caught me walking through the living room naked, resulting in the very first nude video of me (that I know about), which was promptly sent to the cloud and saved to the Home Cam app on my phone. This appears to be a common problem for the smart home set.

When you are an asshole and the President, maybe you should be more selective with your friends and associates....

Josh Marshall's (Talking Points Memo) political commentary is consistently prescient and accurate. This article focuses on the Porter situation.

All of it starts to feed on itself. The President is defined by his predation. He attracts these people to him or they are the only options available and he in turn protects them. He’s staffed by the inexperienced, the incompetent and the reprobate. They are unable to hide his nature even when it would be in his interest to allow them to do so. The rush of crises and incapacity yields desperation and lying, in part because of the nature of the situation but even more because these behaviors are validated from the top. Did John Kelly start out as a liar? We don’t know. He seems to be one and a not terribly good one now. Porter’s exposure is like a brief but sustained flash of light amidst the moral darkness and squalor of Trump White House, briefly illuminating all the dreck and rot of the rough beast of Trumpism.