111 results for “Stephen_Hill_Flapjack_Central”
In Arkansas, Democrats see an opening at the edge of the competitive midterms map (Stephen Fowler/NPR)
https://www.npr.org/2026/10/25/nx-s1-6009402/midterm-blue-wave-map-arkansas-democrats-cotton-shoffner-hill-jones
http://www.memeorandum.com/261025/p19#a261025p19
Trump's former campaign manager on GOP ahead of midterms: 'It's ugly' (Ford McCracken/The Hill)
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/6170199-stepien-midterm-elections-republicans/
http://www.memeorandum.com/261024/p48#a261024p48
Stephen of Blois was King of England and Duke of #Normandy from 1135 to his death OTD in 1154 https://cromwell-intl.com/travel/france/pierre-tourneresse/?s=mb #travel #history
Stephen of Blois was King of #England and Duke of Normandy from 1135 to his death OTD in 1154 https://cromwell-intl.com/travel/uk/avebury/?s=mb #travel #history
Stephen Bunting’s next European Championship match holds extra significance as PDC scenario emerges
Stephen Bunting’s European Championship quarter-final against Gerwyn Price will take on extra significance for ‘The Bullet’ – as…
#Golf #ThePlayersChampionship #darts #StephenBunting
https://www.europesays.com/golf/82808/
Stephen Fry: ‘Sherlock Holmes altered the course of my whole life’ https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/oct/25/stephen-fry-sherlock-holmes-altered-the-course-of-my-whole-life #ArthurConanDoyle #StephenFry #Books #Culture #CrimeFiction #Sherlock #SherlockHolmes
Stephen Fry: ‘Sherlock Holmes altered the course of my whole life’
By Stephen Fry
Nearly a hundred years after Arthur Conan Doyle’s last Sherlock Holmes story, the writer and broadcaster unravels the mystery of the detective’s enduring appeal
#ArthurConanDoyle #StephenFry #Books #Culture #Crimefiction #Sherlock #SherlockHolmes #TheGuardian #StephenFry
Stephen Kaisler will give the talk "Lisp Machines: Hardware and Software Architecture Influence". The talk, on November 19, 2026 at the Computer Conservation Society in London, will also cover Interlisp-D Xerox workstations.
https://www.computerconservationsociety.org/lectures/2026-27/20261119.htm
Stephen Robles list of apps for Duo.
@stephenrobles Hi Stephen - enjoying your posts on the Duo (and MPU this morning re the Mac Mini).
Apologies if you covered this already, but I’m finding not being able to charge my Duo while using the kickstand in Apple’s case a pain … With the kickstand deployed the usb port is on the ground-facing edge.
(Talking about the minis … was relieved to see that the new iPad Mini maxes out at 512GB so my 1TB Duo won’t be displayed by the new shiny object).
Yakka skink numbers increase in Charleville after fences installed
When Stephen Peck visits yakka skink colonies scattered between Cape York and southern Queensland, he sees a species…
#NewsBeep #News #Australia #AU #Conservation #Ecology #outback #reptile #skink #threatenedspecies #vulnerablespecies
https://www.newsbeep.com/au/939765/
Yakka skink numbers increase in Charleville after fences installed
When Stephen Peck visits yakka skink colonies scattered between Cape York and southern Queensland, he sees a species…
#Australia #AU #Austrlia #Conservation #ecology #outback #reptile #skink #threatenedspecies #vulnerablespecies
https://www.europesays.com/australia/128798/
Game Studio Starter Kit (3 Game Collection) by Stephen Gose is the featured track of online courses 🛤️ on Leanpub!
This is the perfect Game Studio starter kit for launching your initial online dream business. This kit contains 3 tutorial books to help you create 3 different online games.
Link: https://leanpub.com/set/leanpub/gsskit
#Javascript #Game_development #Web_development #Gaming #Romance
Discontent with Trump buoys Democrats in Ohio: ‘People are disgusted by the corruption’
By Stephen Starr in Fairborn, Ohio
In a reliably red state, candidates say dissatisfied voters tell them they’re planning to vote Democrat for the first time
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/26/ohio-democrats-trump
#Ohio #Democrats #USpolitics #USmidtermelections2026 #USnews #DonaldTrump #TheGuardian #StephenStarrinFairborn #Ohio
What makes a good spine-tingler? Stephen Graham Jones says it's all in the ending https://www.npr.org/2026/10/25/nx-s1-6007348/what-makes-a-good-spine-tingler-stephen-graham-jones-says-its-all-in-the-ending?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon
Movie TV Tech Geeks #TV #StephenKing #MrRobot #Lost The 15 Best Shows To Watch if You Love Stephen King http://dlvr.it/TW453B
Live: Wall Street retreats as oil prices continue to rise, ASX set to slip
By Stephen Letts
Oil prices have jumped, putting downward pressure on global stock markets, including the ASX. Follow the day's events and insights from our business reporters on the ABC News live markets blog.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-26/asx-markets-business-live-news-october-26/107306820
#StockMarket #FinancialMarkets #Currency #Cryptocurrency #Economy #CompanyNews #StephenLetts
One UI 9 could have caught up to Google, but Samsung is still missing one thing
Stephen Radochia / Android Authority Add Android Authority on Google: I remember the pain of firing up Samsung’s…
#EuropeSays #Korea #KR #Samsung #SamsungGalaxy #SamsungGalaxyS26 #SamsungGroup #SamsungOneUI
https://www.europesays.com/korea/201395/
Absurd request: could I buy a physical audiobook for someone in the UK to rip for me? I'm trying to get the unabridged Stephen Briggs recording of Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment in its UK edition - something that is no longer available digitally for sale except in its awful US edition that alters the meaning of the book.
It's unsurprisingly difficult to buy a physical English language UK only audiobook that's >20 years old anywhere, but this one at least pops up in the UK once in a while, but I'm yet to ever see it on German sites or in second hand shops.
Boosts OK #discworld #bookstodon
😎 In the last 20 years, the Alberta chapter of the group – there are 130 grandmothers groups across Canada – has donated around $1.5 million to the Stephen Lewis Foundation.
The federal government says 2,300 new HIV diagnoses were reported in 2024 and an estimated 7,000 in Canada may be unaware of their disgnosis
Morning view of North Beach in Hampton, New Hampshire, 25 October, 2026. Photo by Stephen Rideout.
#NewEngland
#AtlanticCoast
#Sunrise
#SilentSunday
Apple TV kindly gave me early access to their new series ‘Nocturne’, starring Liev Schreiber, Zazie Beetz, Stephen Graham, Bill Camp, Rory Culkin and more. 🍿
It’s thrilling, creepy, action-packed and suspenseful all at once. I’m a big Liev Schreiber fan and seeing him in this role is amazing. And Rory Culkin… OMG! 😱
It’s a whirlwind ride and not for the faint of heart. I highly recommend watching ‘Nocturne’ when it premieres on October 30 on #AppleTV. 🤩
"I know the Lord sees all. But, too, I have to imagine He's inured to the many and various frailties contained in His multitudinous children. Perhaps we're even amusing to him. Perhaps an old pastor fumbling through his prayer by ingrained sound rather than Divine meaning breaks the monotony of His days." - Stephen Graham Jones
America: Imagine if Donald Trump was a woman who was actually intelligent. And instead of just knee-jerk doing whatever the last person told her she should do, she has an actual agenda for her isolationist racism platform. Equally cruel and selfish, but she knows what she's doing rather than just furthering her own greed. And Stephen Miller is her number two. That's Marine le Pen and the RN
“Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought… Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override.”*…
Jacques-Louis David, The Tennis Court Oath, 1790-4 (source)Stephen Colbert once observed that “reality has a well-known liberal bias.” And indeed, liberalism— the political/moral philosophy rooted in individual liberty, consent of the governed, and equality before the law– has been a major ideology through modern times… and, of course, the major ideology animating the founding of the United States.
But as Easten European states turn to authoritarians, Western European nations wrestle with the rise of nationalist far-right parties, and the U.S. is “steered” by MAGA using Project 2025‘s “map,” there’s a concern that liberalism’s days may be past.
Persuasion is running a series of essays on “Liberal Virtues and Values.”
The series, made possible with the generous support of the John Templeton Foundation, will make the case that liberalism has its own distinctive set of virtues and values that are capable not only of responding to the dissatisfaction that drives authoritarianism, but also of restoring faith in liberalism as an ideology worth believing in—and defending—on its own terms.
The latest installment is from Martin Gurri, who argues that Liberalism needs a new foundation (and that how we handle AI will matter fundamentally)…
That liberal democracy is in a state of terminal decline I take to be beyond dispute. Like Alice in the rabbit hole, those of us who dwell in democratic societies suffer from a nauseating sense of falling without ever landing on solid ground. The usual suspects blamed for this tumble—populism, inequality, the economy—are mere surface symptoms of an internal breakdown. We have arrived at the conclusion of a world-historical cycle. Liberal democracy is the procedural embodiment of Enlightenment ideology—and after two centuries of dominance, that ideology has lost all purchase and stands utterly exhausted.
Radical alternatives confront us. Either we reorient our system to post-Enlightenment principles or we risk staggering into the nihilist’s paradise I have called the Endarkenment.
Enlightenment philosophers placed their faith in reason and science. These are purely critical disciplines: liberal propagandists wielded criticism like a scalpel to dissect conservative laggards and utopian revolutionaries alike. Once triumphant at the “end of history,” liberal democracy turned the knife on itself—a process of self-criticism and self-doubt that has shredded its own ideals to ribbons.
The positive values inherited from the Enlightenment—equality, individualism, compassion—were always parasitic on Christianity. But Christianity, like all religions, has no place in a universe ruled by reason and science. Nietzsche long ago brought us the troubling news: the Christian God is dead. Oblivious to the implications of this calamity, liberal democracy kept marching like a cartoon character over the edge of the abyss, until the laws of moral gravity asserted themselves. So began the Great Fall.
Criticism is a force for progress so long as there are blatant irrationalities, like slavery or Jim Crow discrimination, to overcome. But under the hammer of Enlightenment ideals, modern society has been flattened, centralized, and rationalized. Deprived of obvious superstitions to debunk and totalitarian rivals to defeat, liberal democracy has been revealed in all its internal contradictions.
One such contradiction, I contend, pits the cherished principle of equality against the chosen few who actually practice reason and science: let’s call this the problem of the elites.
A second contradiction finds freedom of the press and of opinion arrayed against the need to protect objective truth: call it the problem of information.
Finally, freedom of worship and the life of the spirit collide head-on with the materialist criticism favored by Enlightenment ideology: the problem of meaning.
Each of these contradictions could prove fatal to the democratic project, but none is insoluble, and the search for solutions offers an opportunity for renewal. While there are no guarantees, we could emerge from the crisis with a better understanding of the reach and limits of equality, a more transparent information sphere, and even, it may be, a rich infusion of the transcendental into everyday life…
[Gurri unpacks each of those contradictions…]
… So what is to be done?
The first, obvious step is to move the question to the center of our shared conversations. The most capacious thinkers of the age should contemplate first principles and ultimate goals with at least as much intensity as they invest in Donald Trump or the latest economic report. There’s nothing artificial about this. Science and reason are necessary for modernity. Meaning and moral aspiration are necessary for humanity. A balance must be struck that preserves the one and gives full weight to the other.
Materialism, we must understand, is a valuable perspective for science but not a realistic appraisal of the human condition. Scientists work as if on a geometric point, abstracted from nature and indifferent to its dispositions. In reality, however, we come from nature, we are of nature, and we are far from indifferent to our place in it. Our intuitions are internal to the system: humanity’s spiritual quest is, in every sense, nature reflecting on itself. One such intuition is agency—the belief that, at the crossroads, I am free to go right or left, and I alone make the choice. Another is faith in causation. These stances are irrational, or rather pre-rational, but without them liberal democracy as well as science itself would be impossible.
In the end, materialism is self-defeating. To say, “I choose to be a materialist” is to fall into an absurd fallacy. Either our bodies, which consist of matter, obey unchanging laws, or the mind, transcending matter, is capable of choice. There can be no middle ground.
Politics, in a metaphysical age, will resume its traditional place as a secondary activity—a means to an end. This will leave liberal democracy vulnerable to false prophets who are willing to trample on individual rights in pursuit of some apocalyptic scheme. The interesting question is whether the post-truth condition will make the peril greater or lesser. On the one hand, the lack of universal firewalls might make it easier for a fanatic to flood the system. Yet post-truth itself, I believe, is the strongest kind of firewall. In our fractured, eternally contested environment, the progress of any totalizing doctrine will be painfully slow. The quest for meaning and the struggle over frames of reference are, in the end, really one and the same.
We have inherited a rich and evocative spiritual vocabulary, but it belongs to a worldview thousands of years old. “King of kings,” to cite just one example, should sound archaic in a democratic age. Can we awaken the scientific world to the spirit? Is it possible to sanctify our largely instrumental relations? This shouldn’t entail a belief in fairies and goblins, or even necessarily in religion. Any good empiricist will admit that the richest human lives are lived symbolically. Can we climb the symbolic ladder to the mountaintop, where meaning and modern humanity come harmoniously together—anchoring, it may be, a loftier understanding of equality and social life, and of the sanctity of truth?
We won’t know until we try. Pessimism, let me suggest, is unwarranted. History moves in mysterious ways. We may be due for a second coming of historian Karl Jaspers’ “Axial Age”: preachers and philosophers who conceived a drastically updated transcendental vision, with the rational and the sacred, truth and meaning, reconciled with political freedom.
For 200 years, we placed society under the sway of universal principles. That’s gone with the wind. We have entered an era of radical contingency, in which even truth is indeterminate. The natural tendency is to retreat to the certainties of the past—but there’s no going back. If we hope to preserve the gains from Enlightenment society, and resolve its many contradictions, we’ll have to do so within a new and wildly unstable conceptual framework.
With the spell of the Enlightenment broken, liberal democracy will have to redefine what “created equal” means. This process could end in a rigid caste system, with the institutions in the hands of self-selected mandarins who wield the power of the state to impose their “solutions.” Preferably, and more likely given the thrust of the new technology, we’ll see a flattening of the institutions and the continued trampling by the public into the sacred spaces of politics and communication.
Equality, however understood, will be forged in the will of the citizenry rather than granted by a benevolent God. That will make it contingent like everything else, and so liable to variation and in constant need of defense. And if perfect equality is an impossible dream, eternal inequality requires impossible discipline. The current elite class, already under enormous pressure, may lose its cohesion and melt into the impermanence of the age, divided among the various schools and sects and frames of reference.
The structure of information will follow the definition of equality. The commanding heights will be control over AI. If AI development and deployment is a closed game, the elites could set themselves up as intermediaries in the oracle of an omniscient divinity. If AI is a competitive product, the public will gain the upper hand. In that case, we can expect a flowering of eccentric applications, the individualization of commerce and industry, and the final overthrow of the expert class. The information sphere will remain the mirror to our passions, divisions, and metaphysical longings. Freedom of speech, no longer “endowed by our Creator,” will become the battleground on which the question of equality is ultimately settled.
Here I finally reveal myself in my true colors. I’m an analyst. My task is to describe reality, and that’s what this essay is about. But I also lead an active life inside the world that I’m describing—and I have preferences. I see equality as a factor of opportunity, law, and human dignity, not of perfect outcomes. I think truth emerges from examining a subject from a large number of perspectives, even those that may seem disturbing or false. I hope that my story—as a person, a father, a grandfather—connects to other stories in the past and will connect to more in the future, in a pattern that is not entirely devoid of meaning. And I believe fervently in liberal democracy, because—born in Cuba—I have tasted the alternative.
The breakdown of Enlightenment ideology is only the latest challenge liberal democracy has faced in my lifetime. I’m not entitled, as an analyst, to downplay the perils ahead, but I’m allowed, as an American, to have faith that they will once again be overcome…
Eminently worth reading in full: “The Search for a Post-Enlightenment Democracy”
###
As we renew, we might send free-thinking birthday greetings to Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (or as he’s usually called, Benjamin Constant); he was born on this date in 1767. A French political thinker, activist, and writer on political theory and religion (whose work influenced, among many others, Sir Isaiah Berlin), Constant was a committed republican from 1795, backing the coup d’état of 18 Fructidor in1797, and the following one on 18 Brumaire, in 1799. He became the leader of the Liberal opposition in 1800, during the Consulate. Constant fell out with Napoleon, and had to flee (first to Switzerland, then to Saxony). Nonetheless, after his return to France, Constant sided with the Emperor during the Hundred Days, drafting the Charter of 1815. He became politically active again during the Bourbon Restoration and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1818 (where he remained until his death in 1830). As the head of the Liberal opposition, known as Indépendants, Constant was one of the most notable orators in the Chamber, especially in his role as a proponent of the parliamentary system.
Portrait of Constant by Hercule de Roche, c. 1820 (source) #authoritarianism #BenjaminConstant #culture #democracy #Elites #Enlightenment #FrenchHistory #history #illiberalism #information #liberalism #MartinGurri #meaning #moralPhilosophy #Napoleon #philosophy #politicalPhilosophy #religion
I have a #PoliticalTheory: the Trump administration is basically the cast of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." Here me out...
Trump = Frank Reynolds. Crazy, lies about his wealth, known ties to Russia and North Korea, hates his children, has crawled out of a leather couch naked at least once.
Hegseth = Mac, right down to the alcoholism, weird understanding of religion, fake feats of strength, and latent homosexuality.
Stephen Miller = Dennis. Creepy, irredeemably evil, repels women.
¿Sabías que Fondo de Bikini, la ciudad subterránea de Bob Esponja, está inspirada en un escenario real de pruebas nucleares?
Resulta que el creador de la serie, el biólogo marino Stephen Hillenburg, ubicó la mítica ciudad de los dibujos animados justo debajo del verdadero Atolón Bikini en el Océano Pacífico, el mismo lugar donde Estados Unidos detonó más de 20 bombas atómicas entre 1946 y 1958. De hecho, la famosa isla con 3 palmeras que aparece en la introducción de la caricatura es una representación directa de este atolón en la superficie.
Alt text via @altbot y @TeLoDescribot
#bobesponja #datocurioso #caricaturas #historia #animación