Politics

🪞 A Reflection “Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test.” — Ingersoll, said of Lincoln (“Abraham Lincoln: A Lecture,” 1895) Attribution note: this line is routinely credited to Lincoln, but it does not appear anywhere in his writings or speeches. It is a compression of Robert G. Ingersoll’s tribute to him: “Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test.” “Abraham Lincoln: A Lecture” (1895). ...

“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” Carl Sagan would have turned 91 today. For millions who first met him through Cosmos or the pages of The Demon-Haunted World, his voice remains a beacon: calm, curious, and utterly unwilling to surrender wonder to superstition. He invited us not merely to look up, but to understand what we saw, to marry awe with evidence. 1 · A Voice for the Ages Sagan’s gift was not just that he knew the universe; it was that he could make the universe knowable. At a time when science often felt remote, he made it intimate: hydrogen burning in the hearts of stars, atoms forged in supernovae finding their way into human hands. To watch him speak was to feel that curiosity itself was sacred. ...

🪞 A Reflection “Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking.” “Science is a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility.” — Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, ch. 2, and Charlie Rose, 27 May 1996 Source note: the two clauses above are real Sagan, but they come from two different sources and had been joined into one quotation. The first is from The Demon-Haunted World*, ch. 2; the second from Sagan’s final* Charlie Rose interview (27 May 1996), reprinted in Conversations with Carl Sagan (2006). Neither source contains the other’s clause. ...

While the bulk of the “No Kings” protests unfolded across the United States, the movement found resonance in international communities as well, signaling that opposition to perceived authoritarianism and executive over-reach in Washington has an overseas echo. 🌍 Global Participation The protest coalition behind No Kings, led in the U.S. by Indivisible and the 50501 Movement, also mobilized international chapters and diaspora groups under alternate banners such as “No Tyrants” or “No Dictators” when the word “Kings” ran the risk of confusing anti-monarchic protest abroad. (Wikipedia) ...

Look again at that pale blue dot. A speck suspended in sunlight. Every person you’ve ever loved. Every shout, every triumph, every quiet act of grace. All of it, balanced on a pixel. Distance compresses us. It turns conflict into noise and perspective into truth. From out there, certainty looks small. Humility looks like intelligence. Curiosity looks like courage. The Pale Blue Dot does not diminish us. It clarifies us. ...

🌎 Reflection: The Contributions of Invasive Humans Last Monday was Indigenous Peoples Day, which means we once again pretended that reflection counts as redemption. Politicians tweeted something solemn, schools trotted out platitudes, and by early Tuesday we were back to bulldozing what was left. History books call it exploration. The truth is simpler: invasion with better PR. We arrived, took what wasn’t ours, renamed everything, and congratulated ourselves for our courage. The native peoples gave us corn, medicine, and balance. We gave them disease, treaties written in disappearing ink, and a few casinos to make the math look fair. ...

On Saturday afternoon, hundreds (and by some accounts thousands) of people gathered at the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri, for the second wave of the nationwide “No Kings” protests, a coordinated effort of demonstrations held in over 2,600 U.S. locations. (Reuters) The local event, organized by Indivisible Kansas City’s founder Beverly Harvey, kicked off around 2 p.m. and emphasized that the movement was about defending democracy, not creating a spectacle. “We’re not going to bow down to a dictator,” she told the crowd. “We’re going to rise up… until this dictatorship is gone.” (KCUR) ...

📰 Reflection: The Shutdown Showdown I owe you an apology for the quiet week. No new articles, no fresh analysis, just the hum of a weary mind taking a breather. Sometimes you have to pause, even when you don’t want to. As for Washington’s latest shutdown drama, I see no angels in this one: only the bad and the worse. It’s less about policy now and more about performance. Every speech is a jab, every soundbite a weapon. Meanwhile, regular people pay the price in stalled services, missed paychecks, and a slow erosion of trust. ...

🪞 A Reflection When people talk about investing, they usually focus on charts, PE ratios, or the “hot” asset of the moment. But Morgan Housel, in The Psychology of Money, reminds us that the hardest part of investing isn’t math. It’s behavior. Your emotions, your patience, and your discipline will determine more about your wealth than any spreadsheet ever will. Wealth Is What You Don’t See Wealth isn’t the car in the driveway or the vacation photos online. Real wealth is invisible: the money you quietly didn’t spend, the patience you showed when others splurged. For retirees, that discipline decades ago is what pays dividends today. ...

Investing isn’t just a numbers game. It’s an emotional one. Charts, spreadsheets, and allocation tables give us the illusion that investing is rational. But when real money is on the line, our brains often have other plans. Market drops, headlines, and the actions of others trigger deep-seated biases that can quietly sabotage even the smartest strategies. Understanding these psychological traps, and building systems to guard against them, is every bit as important as choosing the right investments. ...