If it's Thursday, this must be Tashkent.
Only 1,374 days to go...
“The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.” ~ Erich Fromm
Living through these times…
11 simple lessons from the world’s happiest country
Despite its long, dark winters and relatively small economy, Finland has topped the World Happiness Report for eight consecutive years. Why are the Finns so happy? Finnish locals reveal their secrets to happiness – and why it’s not about chasing success…
A Defense Against Gaslighting Sociopaths
…Some scholars argue that we now inhabit a “culture of offense,” a way of turning a claim that some behavior or statement is offensive into, in effect, a right to be offended, which creates a further claim of victimhood. I expect that we can all think of examples of how this culture can be used as a cudgel to disingenuously keep disfavored views and voices out of the public realm.
Five Joyful Ways to Spend Time Online
The Power of Defiant Joy in a World on Fire
This isn’t the dream our ancestors whispered into our bones. And it’s not the future our hearts ache to create…
…There is beauty in this world, and in it, wonder, epiphanies, community will teach us how to be the best for one another.
Finding the humor…
The economy is crashing, but Trump is fixated on your shower’s water pressure
There are a lot of issues President Trump could be worried about right now, from dealing with the repercussions of his global tariff war to investigating why his administration’s war plans were direct messaged to a journalist. Instead, he’s preoccupied with your showerhead.
That’s right: On Wednesday, just after announcing that the U.S. would levy a head-turning 125% tariff on all Chinese imports, Trump was busy signing an executive order about showerheads.
The SNL Parody That Captured the Tariffs Chaos
SNL can get a lot of mileage out of mocking Trump’s White House, but the sketch was a reminder that interpreting a big political story by way of a weekly grocery list makes it terrifyingly real.
Thought for the day in honor of his birthday…
“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?”
― Thornton Wilder
Must Read Article:
America Is Learning the Wrong Lesson from Elon Musk’s Success
Leadership by intimidation and insult is a bad strategy. Belittling people doesn’t boost their productivity; it diminishes it….Disrespect doesn’t just demotivate. It also disrupts focus, causing costly mistakes…And ruthless, haphazard downsizing can cause the highest performers — the ones who have the best opportunities elsewhere — to jump ship. Denigrating people is not a path to accomplishing meaningful goals. It reflects a lack of self-control and a shortage of emotional intelligence… Promising to cut at least $1 trillion from the federal budget, Mr. Musk has used the same tool kit that he’s applied in the corporate sector: rapidly taking a chain saw to systems he believes are broken and firing a great many people at once, sometimes without any stated reason. Is it working?
Quote of the day:
“We are living through a revolutionary change, a broad shift away from the transparency and accountability mandated by most modern democracies, and toward the opaque habits and corrupt practices of the autocratic world. For the past decade, American government and business alike have slowly begun to adopt the kleptocratic model pioneered by countries such as Russia and China, where the rulers’ conflicts of interest are simply part of the fabric of the system…
Before it’s too late, everyone who can do so must communicate what is happening: American government, American foreign policy, and American trade policy are slowly being transformed, not to benefit Americans but to benefit the president, his family, and his friends. Only voters can stop them.”
~ Anne Appelbaum
What I’m reading today…
Trump’s Supreme Court defiance
Donald Trump just sent the Supreme Court an unambiguous message: You made your ruling. Now enforce it, because I’m not going to. That constitutional crisis we’ve expected, yet feared? It’s here.
Homeland security told US-born immigration lawyer to leave country
The Trump administration has waged an aggressive effort to remove non-citizens from the United States, including people who are here legally and have not been charged with crimes. Trump has also openly mused about removing US citizens who commit unspecified crimes from the country and sending them to prison in El Salvador. Removing US citizens from the United States is clearly illegal, experts say.
Once upon a time (and not even that long ago), blatant conflicts of interest, especially involving foreign entities, were something presidents sought to avoid. No previous inhabitant of the White House would have wanted to be seen doing personal business with companies from countries that seek to influence American foreign policy. Such dealings risk violating the Constitution, which prohibits government officials from accepting “gifts, titles or emoluments from foreign governments.” But during Trump’s first term, the court system largely blew off his commercial entanglements. Now he not only does business with foreign as well as domestic companies that have a direct interest in his policies, he advertises and celebrates them. We know the identities of the golf-tournament sponsors not because investigative journalists burrowed deep into secret contracts, but because they appear on official websites and were displayed on a billboard at his golf course…New standards were already set in December, when the Trump Organization announced the construction of a Trump Tower in Saudi Arabia, an investment that posed a clear conflict of interest for the president-elect….
…one particular Trump backer has already profited from this new world in which conflicts of interest just don’t matter. Elon Musk, who has no mandate other than the personal blessing of the president, now has enormous influence over the very same government institutions that have long subsidized and regulated his companies. Musk slashed jobs at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal agency that oversees auto safety and crash investigations, including those involving his own electric-vehicle company, Tesla. Musk oversaw mass firings at other regulatory agencies that had launched more than 30 investigations into his companies, which include SpaceX and Neuralink…
The right question to ask about Trump’s tariff policy is also financial: How will this enormous change to American trade policy benefit Trump? One answer is already clear. The countries and large companies damaged by these tariffs, some of which could face huge losses or even bankruptcy, will have an enormous incentive to play up to the president, to offer him political donations, and maybe even to offer business deals to him, his family, or his friends in order to get some kind of exception made for themselves or their industry.
“Has Donald Trump put you off visiting America? Twice we’ve asked this question of Telegraph Travel readers and on both occasions a majority said he had. Last month, 56% of 8,000 respondents suggested they would now think twice about a US holiday. Of the 3,000 people who answered a similar poll this month, 80% said Trump was a deterrent. …three months on from Trump’s inauguration, hard data on visitor numbers to the States is emerging – and it’s bad news for US tourism. The number of visits by UK residents was down 14.3% in March compared with the same month in 2024, official figures show, while visits from tourists across western Europe fell by 17%. The predicted ‘Trump slump’ is very real.” (The Telegraph)
This legal and rhetorical subterfuge (plus the lies from Trump minions that the Supreme Court sided with Trump 9-0 and that he had been adjudicated to be a member of MS-13) must not overtake the gravamen of this human right abuse: He is wrongfully held under appalling conditions. (The claim he was a gang member comes from two uncorroborated, hearsay documents that contradict one another.)
Trump’s Science Cuts Will Be Felt for Generations
A skeptic might point out that at least some of the advances in science and technology that are linked to NSF fellowships or grants would have happened anyway even without that federal support. That’s surely true in some cases. But the overall track record of achievement is so strong, the scale of the returns on NSF fellowships and grants is so great, and the evidence of their indispensability to American discovery and invention so clear—not least from testimonials and biographies of scientists and engineers—that the counterfactual is unpersuasive.
What Christian Nationalists Get Right
Christian Nationalists are Right - (about some things, but wrong when they ignore complexity, or tell only part of the truth)
One of Trump’s key attacks on the Biden administration before the election was his lie that it had shortchanged the North Carolina victims of the devastating Hurricane Helene by sending money for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to undocumented immigrants, likely to buy their votes (it is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections). In fact, the Biden administration and FEMA had been in the state since the start and approved FEMA’s reimbursement for 100% of disaster relief, particularly emergency protective services and the removal of debris, renewable after six months. Trump won North Carolina by more than 3 points, but on Saturday the Trump administration denied North Carolina’s application for that extension. ‘The need in western North Carolina remains immense—people need debris removed, homes rebuilt, and roads restored,’ North Carolina governor Josh Stein said. ‘I am extremely disappointed and urge the President to reconsider FEMA’s bad decision, even for 90 days. Six months later, the people of western North Carolina are working hard to get back on their feet; they need FEMA to help them get the job done.’” ~Heather Cox Richardson
Cops Tase Protesters as Chaos Erupts at MTG’s Wild Town Hall
“If you... want to protest, shout and chat, we will have you removed just like that man was thrown out. We will not tolerate it!” she said.
America's shadow economy shrinks due to deportation fears
Pockets of the U.S. economy — from landscaping to elder care to restaurants — depend on the labor of undocumented immigrants to stay afloat. But the vast shadow workforce extends beyond them. It includes legal immigrants with work restrictions, like students and asylum seekers. Immigration crackdowns under the Trump administration are spreading fear — causing people to skip work, straining businesses, and leaving families without income. Anxiety is rising among undocumented workers after the IRS agreed to share data with ICE, leaving many worried that paying taxes could now be used against them.
Republicans Ponder the Unthinkable: Taxing the Rich
Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the administration described the ideas as part of the early brainstorming process for their tax bill. Democrats have tried and failed to make similar moves, and without a clear champion the ideas could fizzle out. Some Republicans quickly promised to try and kill any tax increases, and leadership was circumspect.
Army Enlisted Academy Bars Students from Writing About Women and Minorities
The Army's premier institution for training its most senior noncommissioned officers has barred its students from writing academic essays on topics such as women, minorities and other issues related to diversity.
The 10-month Sergeants Major Academy at Fort Bliss, Texas, includes multiple major projects in its curriculum, including two essays students were expected to work on for several months. Both projects were scrapped from the course and replaced with a single essay.
A Brief History of Culture As Soft Power
Soft power still exists. The question is whether we as a country understand that it, too, makes America great. And I am afraid that President Trump does not understand that well enough, that his view of the world is “might makes right.” I think that’s a potentially cataclysmic mistake. I fear that we will compromise our ability to influence other countries, to pursue interests that dovetail with our own national interests.
Inside Trump’s Pressure Campaign on Universities
“What if we never pay them?” Mr. Trump casually asked, according to a person familiar with the conversation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private discussion. “Wouldn’t that be cool?”
The moment underscored the aggressive, ad hoc approach continuing to shape one of the new administration’s most consequential policies….The opaque process is upending campuses nationwide, leaving elite institutions, long accustomed to operating with relative freedom from Washington, reeling from a blunt-force political attack that is at the leading edge of a bigger cultural battle.
Why China Won’t Give In to Trump
The Chinese Communist Party is characterizing Trump’s trade war as an American effort to contain and suppress China’s economic success—one the government is fully prepared to thwart, according to one commentary in the People’s Daily. This framing commits Beijing to holding out, because the alternative is for a party that predicates its power on the projection of strength to appear to be capitulating to a hostile onslaught.
Trump and his team do not seem to understand Xi’s political realities. They seem to believe that if they keep turning up the pressure, Xi will eventually come to heel.
Des Moines food pantries face spiking demand as the Iowa region’s SNAP enrollment declines
As part of its drive to cut federal spending, the Trump administration has paused over US$500 million of funds that had previously flowed annually to food banks across the U.S. It’s not the only policy change that could make it harder than it already is for many Americans to get enough to eat…Congress is currently deciding whether to cut SNAP spending. If lawmakers do that, benefits will decline, increasing the strain on food pantries in Iowa and everywhere else across the country.
DOGE takes a slice out of America's 250th birthday
The National Endowment for the Humanities on Monday opened applications for 250 challenge grants, worth up to $25,000 each, for projects related to the "founding of the American nation, key historical figures, and milestones that reflect the exceptional achievements of the United States" in honor of the anniversary. But state officials say the cuts have already prompted them to shed staff and suspend new programming, so even the possibility of new anniversary-specific funding would not fill the massive gap.
Picture of Trump after the assassination attempt displaces Obama portrait at the White House
The White House on Friday hung a painting of President Donald Trump depicting a moment after an assassination attempt against him last summer — bumping the official portrait of one of his predecessors, Barack Obama.
Hanging a new presidential likeness without advance notice is unusual, and Trump putting himself in that space could be seen as him breaking with norms yet again. By tradition, portraits of the two most recent former presidents go on display in the foyer — and Trump is in the unique position of also being a former president.
What I am listening to…
“Even if Donald Trump finds an off-ramp from these tariffs, and I don’t know that he will… he may have permanently damaged the reputation of the United States geopolitically and economically.”
What I read every day…
