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An Eclectic Blog
Written & Curated
by Kyle Callahan

Latest Curations

Young Voters Ain’t As Youthful As They Used To Be

May 16, 2024

For most of his presidency and the campaign so far, [President Biden has] primarily talked about wage growth, cutting junk fees, and the historically low unemployment rate. And young voters see this: there’s a 37-point gap between how much they want Biden to prioritize lowering prices, and how much they think he is.

“Young voters trust Joe Biden more than Donald Trump on just about everything — except lowering prices. That’s a real problem…If your only bright spot is the one that matters, that’s something that worries me, as a Democrat.”

— “What young voters actually care about,” Vox

Significant News

May 16, 2024

News Minimalist uses AI (ChatGPT-4) to read the top 1000 news every day and rank them by significance on a scale from 0 to 10. Significance is estimated based on seven factors: scale (how many people the event affected); magnitude (how big was the effect); potential (how likely it is that the event will cause bigger events); novelty (how unexpected or unique was the event); immediacy (how close in time is the event); actionability (how likely it is that a reader can act on the news for personal benefit);
positivity (how positive is the event [used to fix media negativity bias]); credibility (how credible is the source). The results are posted on the main page.

— newsminimalist.com

No way in hell, but it would be heavenly if they could pass it.

May 8, 2024

Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and California congressman Ro Khanna, revealed on Wednesday a new bill aimed at eliminating medical debt.The bill, introduced with Oregon senator Jeff Merkley and Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib,would create a federal grant program to cancel all existing patient debt and amend the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to block creditors from collecting past medical bills. The legislation would also update billing requirements for medical providers and alter the Consumer Credit Reporting Act to prevent credit agencies from reporting information related to unpaid medical bills, alleviating the risk of such debt damaging patients’ credit histories.

– “Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna reveal bill to ‘cancel all medical debt’,” The Guardian

How Originalism Ate the Law

May 8, 2024

It happened because an entire Potemkin village of originalist academics, originalist law-review articles, originalist theories—chiefly funded by very contemporary oligarchs—was built up to present it as a reversion to the way things always were, as opposed to a revanchist attack on modernity itself; an attack on the common law itself and an assault on the idea of a pluralist, expansive vision of liberty. Originalism is a modern-day lie about history that presents itself as historical… As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has pointed out on more than one occasion, the use of history itself to erase history is now a central part of the originalist project.

— “How Originalism Ate the Law,” Slate.com

Midnight Is Getting Closer

May 8, 2024

Russia said…it would practise the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons as part of a military exercise after what the Moscow said were threats from France, Britain and the United States. Russia says the United States and its European allies are pushing the world to the brink of confrontation between nuclear powers by supporting Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars of weapons, some of which are being used against Russian territory. Russia’s defence ministry said it would hold military drills including practice for the preparation and deployment for use of non-strategic nuclear weapons. It said the exercises were ordered by President Vladimir Putin.

— “Putin orders tactical nuclear weapon drills to deter the West,” Reuters

This Is Not Hyperbole

April 29, 2024

Trump’s legal argument is a path to dictatorship. That is not an exaggeration: His legal theory is that presidents are entitled to absolute immunity for official acts. Under this theory, a sitting president could violate the law with impunity, whether that is serving unlimited terms or assassinating any potential political opponents, unless the Senate impeaches and convicts the president. Yet a legislature would be strongly disinclined to impeach, much less convict, a president who could murder all of them with total immunity because he did so as an official act. The same scenario applies to the Supreme Court, which would probably not rule against a chief executive who could assassinate them and get away with it.

— “The Trumpification of the Supreme Court,” The Atlantic

Latest Creations

Albums Added in April 2024

May 5, 2024

April brought a symphony of sounds to my music library, from Taylor Swift’s soul-baring ballads to Pearl Jam’s thunderous anthems. Mark Knopfler’s guitar mastery intertwined with the vibrant rhythms of UK jazz and soul, painting a vivid tapestry of sonic exploration. Dive into the melodies that colored my April.

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Albums Added in March 2024

April 4, 2024

I’m cataloging the albums I add to my Apple Music library each month. I’m not sharing any singles, just the LPs and EPs. I review each album in a couple of paragraphs (for the most part), but I can recommend virtually all of them.

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Paranoia

March 26, 2024

A not-so-quick story about how paranoia is real, regardless of how many years it’s been since I last smoked cannabis.

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Albums Added in February 2024

March 22, 2024

These are the albums I added to my music library in February 2024. I am not including any “singles” I added — just the EPs or full-length albums (neè, LPs).

All told, there were 12.

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Albums Added in January 2024

February 12, 2024

This year, I will try to write a short post somewhere near the beginning of every month that highlights the albums I added to my music library the previous month. The debut post for this series is (typically) late, but it’s not like the post changes because it’s late. Regardless

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Is Trump Barred from Office? A Deep Dive into the State Rulings

January 23, 2024

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is clear: No person shall…hold any office…under the United States…who, having previously taken an oath…as an officer of the United States…to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection…against the same, or given aid or comfort

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The Books I Read in 2023

January 1, 2024

Every year, I challenge myself to read a certain number of books. I used to set my goal around thirty, but I read over fifty books in both 2021 and 2022, so this year, I set my goal at forty. Once again, I read over fifty. Fifty-six, to be exact.

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Top 5 Shows of 2023

December 18, 2023

Despite having written nearly 90,000 words of a new novel (still in progress), developing two hobbies (playing ukulele and drawing zen tangles), working as both a teacher and administrator, cooking the majority of my family’s meals, and watching literally every Celtics game for the first time in as long as

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