This week I finished: Tyrants and Rogues: Understanding the Declaration of Independence, by soon-to-be podcast guest Robert G. Parkinson: Wow, I've been learning a lot about the revolution, but didn't realize how much challenge the colonists faced, nor did I learn about the people on the British side. I knew about the big events and interactions that make the history books like the Stamp Tax, Coercive Acts, Boston Massacre, Lexington and Concord, and the ones you know about. I didn't know about events like the Gaspée affair, the burning of Falmouth, Gwynn's Island, and all the British aristocracy and military acting. I had only learned about people like Hutchinson, Gage, Dartmouth, and so on as caricatures, not real people. I didn't know what motivated them.…

Context: A few months ago I posted How I watch videos I find online: not online, which describes how I save time, distraction, and battery power by downloading videos, usually at 144 resolution or audio only, and watching them later offline. I recommend the practice, not just to hurt people less by polluting and depleting less, but to avoid the distraction of being tempted to watch other videos and get stuck. It creates mental freedom, a common result from hurting people less. Today I want to point out another way to restore mental freedom, focusing on YouTube. I was reminded by seeing someone showing a screen capture of their browser on the page. It was full of ads and recommended videos. I haven't seen either…

This week I finished: Silkwood, directed by Mick Nichols starring Meryl Streep: I saw the dvd at the library so borrowed it. I had seen the title in my recent posts about nuclear disasters. It even mentioned Hanford as a place that the plutonium processed by the characters in this movie was sent. I understood this movie to have come out very close to when Three Mile Island partially melted down, therefore culturally important, but I confused it with The China Syndrome. In any case, Silkwood featured three big stars and a big director. I expected an exposé but it mostly showed a set of roommates nearly close enough to be a family where they all worked in a facility that processed plutonium with shoddy, horrific labor…

This week I finished: The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, by Stacy Schiff: After biographies and documentaries of Washington, Franklin, Douglass, Lincoln, Calhoun, Jefferson, and I'm sure I'm forgetting others a biography of Samuel Adams by a Pulitzer Prize winner made sense. I didn't know how important he was before Washington and even before Franklin. I learned back stories to the colonists' responses to the Stamp Tax, the Townsend Acts, and more. Of course the Tea Party. The purpose of Paul Revere's midnight ride. How much the Tories controlled commerce and gave government positions to their families. How much Samuel Adams led Americans to rebel. How quotable he is. A well-written book that tells the story before the revolution in Boston, then Lexington and Concord, as well…

This week I finished: Should Letting Children Play Alone Outside Be a Crime?, by Ian Frisch in the New York Times: Reading this article prompted me to comment in an online community and to follow up with a string of other articles. The article recounted stories of people reporting to police seeing children without parents watching them, followed by police and the government pursuing the parents. It described an ongoing trend of children being rendered unable to develop independence and social emotional skills. I found the article on the StrongTowns community site. Its founder and podcast guest Chuck Marohn was going to record a podcast episode on it and was soliciting comments from the community. I wrote: From the NY Times article: “Some experts point out…