Danny Deck

The book is Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe.

Since Elliott Investments bought it in 2019 it has really turned around. They have even been expanding recently. The CEO is also CEO of Waterstones in the UK and seems to really understand how to sell books. It's a fascinating how they have been able to thrive.

My point is decisions will have to be made. If one of the ways that decision is made is, "the local news won't show the pictures in a book on air." I think that's a fine reason. If one of the reasons is "Catcher in the Rye is hot garbage and we should stop the cycle of abuse that tells kids it's a classic." I think that's also a good reason. Each challenge isn't equally meritorious but it's hard to take people seriously when they act like no challenge has merit in the context of school libraries specifically.

Nothing is good for book sales quite like getting it on the "banned book" table at Barnes & Noble. There are definitely over zealous people calling for the removal of books, but picking which books are in a library will always have to be done because they're ultimately finite spaces. It's obviously less fraught because Amazon isn't the government, but I recall people on the left trying to get them to remove Abigail Shrier's Irreversible Damage from the store. Since Amazon controls 75% of the ebook market and 50% of the physical book market, getting them to remove a book is much closer to a ban to me than not having the same book in a middle school library.

This is the first time I've seen "an old Cowboy fan" refer to "Stoolwater."

This seems like a politician harvesting rage. No SEC football team was on the field for the Anthem as of 2017. https://theathletic.com/110576/2017/09/25/college-football-national-anthem-protests-nfl-president-donald-trump/ It doesn't look like West Point has team's on the field for their games:

College teams not being on the field/court during the anthem is common. Mulkey said it wasn't a protest, "Honestly, I don't even know when the anthem was played. We kind of have a routine when they're on the floor and they come off at the 12-minute mark. I don't know, we come in and we do our pregame stuff. I'm sorry, listen, that's nothing intentionally done." I'm indifferent to the routine teams have before games.

I recently finished Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg. The most interesting part to me was about how successful couples don't argue less or about different things than unsuccessful couples. Rather they don't use arguments to control each other. People react very negatively when someone takes away their agency, but don't always realize when they're ceding it. If something is the way it has always been, you may not realize what about a situation actually remains within your control. A quote I like, "How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?” I weigh more than I say I want, but then I also snack. I can blame everyone from the admin assistant at the office who keeps a candy jar stocked to Ray Kroc, but ultimately I'm the one with the most agency in this situation.

I doubt it would ever be offline, it would be sold. Steve Mnuchin is already putting together a group to buy it. I've seen a lot of people say we wouldn't have let the USSR buy NBC in the 70s, which is true, but I think in some ways that would be better than the situation with TikTok. At least everyone knew what someone was seeing on NBC. Thanks to the algorithms, it's hard to say what anyone is seeing. Everyone has a unique news bubble they're in on TikTok. The thing is, a sale won't really fix that. I find myself unconvinced by the arguments on either side really. I guess that's a vote for the status quo.

Delayed family formation and lower religiosity would probably top my list for reasons why.

Unfortunately, I think a VP of the opposite party would just be inviting an assassination attempt.

Yes, it's possible. There are 3 combinations that are possible that would lead to a tie: https://www.270towin.com/electoral-college-tie-combinations/ The process is outlined in the linked article, but basically: Each state House delegation gets a vote. In the current Congress, Republicans have the majority of 27 state delegations. So, assuming they held to it, you would get Trump. The senators vote individually to elect the Vice President. If the makeup stayed the same from the current congress you could get a President Trump and VP Harris.

As far as e-readers go, I want to plug Kobos. I really like them a lot better than Kindles. I feel like the software is much more geared toward actually reading rather than selling you the next book. It is also a lot easier to load books from other sources. I still find the killer feature is that it integrates with the Pocket service and so you can save longform articles and read them on the Kobo. It is a much better experience and way less distracting than trying to read online.

The Power Broker is very good. It is definitely a must read, along with Caro's LBJ series. I'm really hoping he is able to finish it, as I don't think anyone could take it up if he even allowed for that.

Recently finished Augustus by John Williams and loved it. It is a novel about the emperor told all through letters. Fascinating both in plot and how the story was told. I also highly recommend his two other novels, Stoner and Butcher's Crossing. Top reads from last year: Fiction: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. A very rare re-read for me and just as enjoyable as the first time. I can't recommend it enough. I can almost guarantee it's the easiest 900 pages you'll ever read. Somebody's Fool by Richard Russo. This is the third in a series after Nobody's Fool and Everybody's Fool and I've loved each of them, and most of Russo's work. I feel like he is kind of a Northeastern Larry McMurtry in a lot of ways, which is about the highest compliment I can give an author. Non-Fiction: Stalin's War by Sean McMeekin. Definitely more of a political history than military. Was pretty enlightening on all of the machinations on the eastern front that are largely ignored in other WW2 histories I've read. G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and The Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage. As the sub-title makes clear, you can trace a lot of the 20th century through Hoover's life, and it was a very interesting read about the FBI during his tenure.