Up From Facebook

Americans, once members of a proudly literate society, read much less than they used to. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, which conducts the most comprehensive survey of the nation’s reading habits,  fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022 . Only 38 percent read a novel or short story. A study analyzing 236,000 responses to the American Time Use Survey found that the  proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023 . (The study looked at people who had read a book, magazine, or newspaper; listened to an audiobook; or read an e-book.) Gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book: Last year, 57 percent of Americans placed a bet. The decline in reading cuts across age groups, gender, and education levels. Even the demographics that traditionally read the most—retirees, women, and college graduates—have seen a collapse.   ~  R...

You probably have read about increasing reports of violent and potentially life-threatening diarrhea caused by cyclospora in multiple states. Cyclospora isn’t new, but the Trump administration stopped tracking it. “As of July 1, the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) program has reduced surveillance to just two pathogens: salmonella and Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC), a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told NBC News. “Before July, the program had been tracking infections caused by six additional pathogens: campylobacter, cyclospora, listeria, shigella, vibrio and Yersinia. Some of them can lead to severe or life-threatening illnesses, particularly for newborns and people who are pregnant or have weakened immune systems. “Monitoring for the six pathogens is no longer required for the 10 states that participate in the program, though those states aren’t precluded from conducting surveillance on their own.” In what sense does blin...

Green Mountain College in Poultney VT closed in 2019 due to insufficient funds. Now, a traveling Pentecostal preacher from Florida has announced on Facebook (from Disneyland) that he’s gonna make it into a Christian fundamentalist college in the least religious state in the nation. The whiskey magnate Raj Bhakta bought the campus in 2020 and has donated it to Tommie Zito, a Florida evangelist who plans to turn the campus into the gospel-preaching Z University. “While the deal may be a good one for Zito and his team of fellow evangelists ,   Bhakta estimated in previous reports that it would cost   $200 million   to restore the campus — which includes dormitories and dining spaces, athletic fields, a gymnasium, and a pool — along with at least $1 million annually in operating costs.” What’s the business model? “ Asked how he would pay to keep the campus going, he said “it’s a faith journey.” In addition to targeting large donors, he’s relying on businesses, churches, and “...

The U.S. abandoning NATO now doesn’t mean Europe will revert to a 1914 mindset; too many economic, cultural, and political threads have been sewn together in the post-WWII period for it to revert to that arrangement. But it is a distinctly American myopia to think Europe will stand pat, won’t evolve on its own as it manages all of its own competing interests, makes its own internal compromises, and responds to the domestic political realities of each country. The U.S. isn’t just abandoning NATO; it’s abandoning having a hand in managing those dynamics and minimizing their impacts on its own national interest — which is another, albeit more nuanced, way of saying Trump is putting his own interest above the nation’s. ~David Kurtz

“In 2017, Roy Moore was accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls, including one who was fourteen at the time of the alleged assault. Nine women came forward. The reporting was extensive and documented. The Republican Party of Alabama endorsed him anyway. The President of the United States endorsed him. He lost by less than two points, and half the party spent the following years insisting the allegations were fabricated.   “In 2018, Christine Blasey Ford testified under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when she was fifteen. She had disclosed the assault to a therapist years before Kavanaugh’s nomination — the same evidentiary pattern that now, in the case of Jenny Racicot, is being cited by the very same right-wing media as proof of credibility. She was smeared. She was called a Democratic operative. Her therapist notes were dismissed. She was forced from her home by death threats. Kavanaugh sits on the Supreme Court ...

My postdoc mentor used to say “We don’t compare ourselves to the worst, we compare ourselves to the best.” Does that aphorism apply in politics? “ POLITICO  REPORTED ON MONDAY AFTERNOON that Graham Platner’s ex-girlfriend  said  he “forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections.” Immediately after the story was published, Platner, the Democratic nominee in the race for Maine’s Senate seat, posted an uncomfortable  video  denying the allegations without making clear whether he would drop out of the race.   “He should, and not just on moral grounds. Because before this story was published, Maine voters in our focus groups told us that they would likely abandon Platner over this exact type of scandal.” *snip*   “There had already been months of talk about Platner’s bad behavior at this point, including about his Nazi tattoo. But many in the group were still planning on supporting him. So we asked them what would mak...