Pause and reflect

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

slip:4a468.

Two important days

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born, and the day you find out why.

slip:4a64.

From the dome of St. Peter’s one can see every notable object in Rome… He can see a panorama that is varied, extensive, beautiful to the eye, and more illustrious in history than any other in Europe.
– Mark Twain

#quoteoftheday #MarkTwain

> The autocrats’ anxiety is entirely justified. Comedy is their kryptonite. They rule by intimidation, and when we laugh at them, their power to scare us evaporates. As Mark Twain wrote in The Mysterious Stranger, “Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”

Which brings me to Stephen Colbert, who hosts his final “Late Show” tonight. ...

I seriously doubt tonight’s farewell episode is the last we’ll hear from the indefatigably creative Colbert, who will likely move to a new platform where he’ll enjoy more freedom and financial success than he had at CBS.

-- Andy Borowitz, May 21, 2026

https://open.substack.com/pub/borowitzreport/p/trump-will-lose-his-war-on-laughter-ad2

#andyborowitz #stephencolbert
#CBS #Trump #ShariRedstone #thelateshowwithstephencolbert
#marktwain #substack
#comedyiskryptonitetoautocrats
#PresidentObama #WarOnLaughter
#Paramount #BigfatBribe

People need to travel

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.

slip:4a1120.

Explore. Deam. Discover.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

slip:4a60.

Courage

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absense of fear.

slip:4a82.

Mark Twain, writing as "Archangel Satan," 1909:

"But now [Adam & Eve] could do evil – and suffer for it; now they had acquired what the Church calls an invaluable possession, the Moral Sense; that sense which differentiates man from the beast and sets him above the beast. Instead of below the beast – where one would suppose his proper place would be, since he is always foul-minded and guilty and the beast always clean-minded and innocent. It is like valuing a watch that must go wrong, above a watch that can't.”

#religion #skepticism #christianity #marktwain #twain #moralphilosophy

I just splurged on a pile of books from my favorite independent bookstore, Bookshop Santa Cruz!

I've been feeling the urge to actually READ the books I just skimmed in school as a teenager. Like, maybe one reason I feel so disconnected from others is the fact that I never actually read anything that I was supposed to read.

Plus a few for just the sheer fun of it . . .

#Books
#BookshopSantaCruz
#StephenKing
#MarkTwain
#CliffordHenderson
#BarbaraKingsolver
#RobertLouisStevenson
#CharlesDickens