Read the full post here. Vairal Video 4 is doing consistently great ST commentary.

Quote: “The great European cathedrals were built over generations by thousands of people and sustained entire communities. Similarly, the electric grid, the public-water supply, the food-distribution network, and the public-health system took the collective labor of thousands of people over many decades. They are the cathedrals of our secular era. They are high among the great accomplishments of our civilization. But they don’t inspire bestselling novels or blockbuster films. No poets celebrate the sewage treatment plants that prevent them from dying of dysentery. Like almost everyone else, they rarely note the existence of the systems around them, let alone understand how they work.”
And Thomas Jefferson’s ink froze so he couldn’t dip his pen in it to write. (Read the whole piece here. It’s worth it.)

Quote: “9) Sufficiently advanced civilizations can synthesize, manufacture, or create any resources found naturally anywhere else in the universe. There is no material, or energy source that cannot be synthesized at home if you have the know-how.”
(Click through here to read all twelve.)

I can’t watch this clip often enough. I wish more of us did.

Heh. (H/t Kottke, I think?)

Love these guys. Of course it helps that they begin with my favorite Disney song ever, sung by my favorite Disney character ever (‘Somebody got to nail that girl’s fins to the floor.’) (h/t Laughing Squid)

Quote for the day

In case I’m not clear here: Anyone who sounds and acts the way Trump does now would already have been removed from controls of an airplane, an emergency room, a combat unit, a newspaper editorial team, a bus. Yet his party grants him control of America’s dealings internally and externally, plus the nuclear fate of the whole word. During his marathon gabfest last week with the NYT, symbol of the elite whose approval Trump still so pathetically craves, Trump said that he’s “angry” about and “very uncomfortable with” the thuggish outrages committed by Noem, Bondi, Miller, and their teams. But he acted, to the Times, as if this had nothing to do with him, and of course he would have smoothed things out if he’d known about them in time. —James Fallows

Outro…

Chatter Lagniappe Sunday 40 fingers Charles C. Mann Doublethink James Fallows Sledding on random objects ST DS9 The Technium Vairal Video 4 Wham!