Honestly, if you can just

show up around when you said you were going to

and do some approximation of what you said you were going to do

and be half decent at your work

I’d say you’re operating at a level 99% above most human beings right now

— Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) July 20, 2021

Sounds about right.

Kevin Drum has a good idea on what a billionaire should do with their wealth.

If I were a multi-billionaire, what would I do with my money? Unfortunately, the really big problems—climate change, national healthcare, racism, etc.—are too big even for a billionaire. Only national governments can really address them.

Instead I would dedicate my fortune to destroying Fox News. I would do it any way I could. Marketing. Lawsuits. Boycotts. Talent poaching. Cable access. Making Rupert Murdoch’s life miserable. You name it. Nor would I have any qualms about playing fair. You have a plan for a space-based laser that interferes with Fox News broadcasts and makes them unwatchable? Great! Here’s a hundred million to give it a go.

Fox News may have started out with narrower goals, but today it’s explicitly aimed at undermining American politics and getting us to hate each other. Why? Because it adds to the fortune of an Australian plutocrat who thinks that plundering the American public is a great way of becoming ever richer. Ditto for the on-air “talent,” which has become rich by figuring out ever bigger and better ways of scaring the poor schmoes who trust them.

American politics is unlikely to recover until Fox News is reduced to rubble. Anyone know a billionaire who agrees?

I could not agree more.

Glenn Kenny, writing on the Decider, has a fantastic piece about Richard Donner. It starts off this way:

If a filmmaker’s critical stock were based on the amount of pleasure they brought to mass audiences, Richard Donner, who died yesterday at age 91, would be in the pantheon.

You can easily forget how many amazing films he directed. Donner made movies people wanted to see and he was a master craftsman. My personal favorite is Superman: The Movie. He had style, and no one else’s style was quite like his. He’ll be missed.

John DeVore, on Humungus, wrote a little something about the passing of Donald Rumsfeld.

Under Rumsfeld’s watch, the U.S. tortured and abused prisoners and tens of thousands of innocent people were killed in wars that still smolder. That ‘war on terror’ transformed America into a country that surveilled the world, and it’s own people, in a paranoid attempt to prevent terrorism. It cost this country unimaginable amounts of blood and treasure to secure this feeling of security and in the future, when the war on terror is studied, they’ll find a story of fear and cruelty and a handful of men who had too much faith in the power of violence and the right of America to do whatever it wants.

Rumsfeld is dead now, which means he’s part of history. And history forgets details because history is lazy. History is what happens when the truth takes off its pants and gets comfortable.

What a cruel and stupid man.

Jonathan D. Karl, writing for The Atlantic, has an article about William Barr and his refusal to go along with the big lie — that Donald Trump won the election.

Barr also looked into allegations that voting machines across the country were rigged to switch Trump votes to Biden votes. He received two briefings from cybersecurity experts at the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. “We realized from the beginning it was just bullshit,” Barr told me, noting that even if the machines somehow changed the count, it would show up when they were recounted by hand. “It’s a counting machine, and they save everything that was counted. So you just reconcile the two. There had been no discrepancy reported anywhere, and I’m still not aware of any discrepancy.”

I don’t have an ounce of sympathy for Barr. He made his bed.

In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court has upheld the the Ninth Circuit’s ruling that the NCAA’s restrictions on paid educational benefits violate antitrust law.

Directly, this ruling will have only moderate impact as it only affects payments tied to an educational benefit (say, the school providing athletes with a laptop, or paid internships.) The bigger impact came from the decisions, where even the conservative wing of the Court took the NCAA to task — Gorsuch outright called the amateurism rules “horizontal price fixing in a market where the defendants exercise monopoly control”, while Kavanaugh noted that the NCAA’s model would be clearly illegal in any other industry in the US.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the future. My simple guess is the “Olympic” sports like swimming, diving, gymnastics, wrestling, and the like will gone. Hope I’m wrong.

Alex Sherman, writing for CNBC, has a great story regarding Anthony Wood, the founder and CEO of Roku and how he had his finger pressed firmly on the pulse of television viewers and the future of TV. The best line is right here:

Wood also noted that Roku’s relatively unchanging user interface and simple remote control have appealed to customers because users want simplicity.

“Many companies just don’t really understand the attitude people have when they’re watching TV,” said Wood. “People want to sit there, drink their beer, and watch TV.”

Incredibly inciteful and, in my opinion, super obvious.

Will Leitch has been posting this piece every Father’s Day since 2003. It isn’t the best thing he’s written, but it is one of the ones that I identify with most. Here’s a taste.

Until the age of 18, all I ever did was play baseball, and this time of year fills me with both wonder and deep regret. Save for occasional wiffleball games in the park, my ball-playing days are over. I think back to Little League often. More than I should.

There was one coach, in particular, who current overbearing kids’ league coaches would be wise to emulate. I played for many, many teams and even more coaches, even people being paid simply to coach, and no one ever came close to the guy who coached our V.F.W. team in the Jaycee League, ages 8–10.  

Go read the rest.

As COVID-19 statistics improve thanks to vaccination efforts, Ariana Grande, Marissa Jaret Winokur and James Corden celebrate the end of mass lockdowns in this “Good Morning Baltimore” parody from “Hairspray.”

I don’t watch his show unless it’s a video like this. I do think James Corden is brilliantly talented and I love these little musical segments when he does them.

This is good.

Nicholas Bate is trying to get me to like Mondays.

Are merely a date, a bolder punctuation point, a shift, an association.

Mondays no longer affect your mood; you are bigger, bolder and more Zen than that.

In fact you love Mondays.

It isn’t working.

At the A&E KISSTORY World Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival KISS performed a short set.

It wasn’t perfect. It was rock and roll. Paul’s voice live just isn’t what it used to be but watch that recent awful Vince Neil performance and you’ll appreciate what’s happening here.

Ed Yong, writing in The Atlantic, does not have good things to say about “rugged individualism” and deadly viruses.

From its founding, the United States has cultivated a national mythos around the capacity of individuals to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, ostensibly by their own merits. This particular strain of individualism, which valorizes independence and prizes personal freedom, transcends administrations. It has also repeatedly hamstrung America’s pandemic response. It explains why the U.S. focused so intensely on preserving its hospital capacity instead of on measures that would have saved people from even needing a hospital. It explains why so many Americans refused to act for the collective good, whether by masking up or isolating themselves. And it explains why the CDC, despite being the nation’s top public-health agency, issued guidelines that focused on the freedoms that vaccinated people might enjoy. The move signaled to people with the newfound privilege of immunity that they were liberated from the pandemic’s collective problem. It also hinted to those who were still vulnerable that their challenges are now theirs alone and, worse still, that their lingering risk was somehow their fault. (“If you’re not vaccinated, that, again, is taking your responsibility for your own health into your own hands,” Walensky said.)

These people never learn the lesson. They will never value others over themselves. COVID doesn’t care. I would love to help these people, but I’m sure they are beyond reason.

Dad Of The Year recreates Disneyland Star Tours attraction in the garage for daughter’s birthday. The finished outcome is mind-blowing.

Musician Grant Woolard composed a brilliant classical music mashup in 2016 that featured 57 Popular Songs by 33 Composers, followed by part II in 2017 which featured 52 Popular Songs by 31 Different Composers and again with part III in 2019 featuring 70 different songs by a variety of composers.

Woolard has now released part IV of his mashup series which also features 70 classical songs in a marvelous musical opus that equals and even exceeds his previous work. Included in part IV is music by Haydn, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Sousa, Schubert, Gershwin, Bach, and many more.

Tom Hanks, writing for The New York Times, thinks everyone should know more about the Tusla Race Massacre.

Until recently, the Tulsa Race Massacre was not seen in movies and TV shows. Thanks to several projects currently streaming, like “Watchmen” and “Lovecraft Country,” this is no longer the case.

I am almost ashamed to admit that I had not heard of this event until I saw it on the Watchmen TV series.

I like to think I have an open mind. I also like to think if I read something that fundamentally challenged my point of view on a topic, I would seriously consider it. Honestly, I’m not so sure.

My belief system and understanding of the world is from a place of privilege. I get that. I have a distinct POV that is not other people’s experience. Presented with an essay, a manifesto, or a persuasive argument against my core beliefs, I’m pretty sure I’d dismiss it.

I could be wrong. I could be right. However, I would love to experience something like that though. Something so profound and mind-blowing that I would switch my position or a core belief.

The best example I have is how I felt after watching several videos from Emmanuel Acho. His Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man series did open my eyes to a plethora of blindspots I had and some I’m sure I continually unintentionally express.

Have you ever read anything online or watched a video that made you change your mind about something?

Bo Burnam has a Netflix special out. This song is unreal

“Apathy’s a tragedy, and boredom is a crime” This is fantastic.

Recently, Maggie Haberman, reporting for The New York Times, said Donald Trump believes he will be reinstated as President of the United States in August. This sounds utterly ridiculous, and I attributed it to right-wing news sources and others trying to keep “the big lie” in the news cycle.

Apparently, it’s true.

The story by Haberman has been confirmed by Charles Cooke of The National Review.

I can attest, from speaking to an array of different sources, that Donald Trump does indeed believe quite genuinely that he — along with former senators David Perdue and Martha McSally — will be “reinstated” to office this summer after “audits” of the 2020 elections in Arizona, Georgia, and a handful of other states have been completed. I can attest, too, that Trump is trying hard to recruit journalists, politicians, and other influential figures to promulgate this belief — not as a fundraising tool or an infantile bit of trolling or a trial balloon, but as a fact.

Let me be clear: this is not fact and not going to happen. This is delusional thinking.

First, there is no do-over. It’s done. Trump is not coming in to take over sitting behind the Resolute Desk. Biden will remain President until his term is ended, he resigns, or, heaven forbid, he dies in office. Even then, Trump doesn’t get to be President again. Kamala Harris assumes the office. Also, Biden isn’t resigning from the Presidency any time soon, and Harris would be the benefactor again anyway, not Trump.

That is not how America works, how America has ever worked, or how America can ever work. American politicians do not lose their reelection races only to be reinstalled later on, as might the second-place horse in a race whose winner was disqualified. The idea is otherworldly and obscene.

Can someone please take the orange man yelling at the clouds to his bed? He obviously needs his meds.