Ashlyn Barreira, 24, said she and her family tried attending Shiloh but were angered early on when they found Shiloh members sitting in their ordinary pew in Orange Park.

Julie Zauzmer, “What Happened When a Black and White Church Merged in Florida”

It is not a disaster for a rich society to reach a point where the same goods are being produced and the same services are being provided, but most people no longer have to work forty or fifty hours a week (in jobs that most of them hate). Or rather, it’s not a disaster unless having no work means having no money or self-respect.

Gwynne Dyer, “2016 Year-Ender”

Dr. Patrick Keelan, “Overcoming Procrastination: A Flow-Chart Approach”

1. Have I made an action plan?
2. Are the action plan items small enough?
3. Have I tried the five-minute rule (commit to getting started on something for five minutes)?
4. Have I examined my underlying assumptions?
   • What benefits am I expecting to derive from procrastinating?
   • What worries do I have about what will happen if I stop procrastinating?

Don’t make me look for your symbol of support. Show it in your words and deeds.

Ijeoma Oluo, “Questioning Safety Pin Solidarity Revealed Why I Can’t Trust White People”

Luigi Pirandello, “Naked”

Laspiga: No! No! It’s when we become convinced that we can’t live as we had dreamed of living! It’s when we realize that what seemed so easy in our dreams—so easy that we could almost lay our hands on it—has become difficult, impossible to attain! …
Ludovico: Yes! But because of certain moments our soul frees itself from all common trivialities …
Laspiga: Yes! Exactly! Exactly!
Ludovico: … soars above the petty obstacles of daily life, forgets all about the petty, insignificant needs we ordinarily feel, shakes from its shoulders all commonplace cares …
Laspiga: Exactly! And now free, unshackled, master of itself, it seems to breath in fresher air … it tingles with life, order, enthusiasm … and the most difficult things, as, I said, become easy …
Ludovico: … and everything is possible! Everything is fluid, liquid, smooth-running … a state of divine intoxication … yes, but this happens only of certain moments, my dear fellow, and these moments pass!
Laspiga: Yes, because our souls are not strong enough! They are unable to bear up under all that inspiration, that’s why.
Ludovico: No, it isn’t that! It’s because you don’t know all the tricks, all the surprises—pleasant and unpleasant—that that soul of yours is playing on you as it breathes there in the air sublimity of such moments—when it has shaken off all restraints, abandoned all reflection, surrendered utterly to the glory of its dreams! You don’t notice those things, but some fine day—and it is an ugly day—you feel yourself pulled down to the solid earth again! Because you can’t understand! You can’t! You can’t understand what it means for a life to come back upon you like this … like … like a memory! … but a memory which, instead of rising from within you, comes upon you unexpectedly from without—and so changed that you are scarcely able to recognize it! You can’t fit it into your life somehow, because you, too, have changed! Nor can you adapt yourself to it—though you understand all the while that it once was your life, an experience of yours, as you may have been once—though not for yourself, and as you really were … the way you talked ... the way you looked … the way you acted … in the memory of the other person—but not the way you really were!

Rands, “I Know my Manager is Flailing and/or Drowning When … ”

Rands, “Regardless of Seniority, Every Good Manager Will … ”

All populists are at heart conspiracy theorists, who pretend that easy solutions exist to society’s woes and have only not been tried to date because elites are wicked and deaf to the sturdy common-sense of decent, ordinary folk.

Lexington, “American Carnage: Donald Trump Becomes America’s 45th President”

Elisa Chavez, “Revenge”

Since you mention it, I think I will start that race war.

I could’ve swung either way? But now I’m definitely spending
the next 4 years converting your daughters to lesbianism;
I’m gonna eat all your guns. Swallow them lock stock and barrel
and spit bullet casings onto the dinner table;

I’ll give birth to an army of mixed-race babies.
With fathers from every continent and genders to outnumber the stars,
my legion of multiracial babies will be intersectional as fuck
and your swastikas will not be enough to save you,

because real talk, you didn’t stop the future from coming.
You just delayed our coronation.
We have the same deviant haircuts we had yesterday;
we are still getting gay-married like nobody’s business
because it’s still nobody’s business;
there’s a Muslim kid in Kansas who has already written the schematic
for the robot that will steal your job in manufacturing,
and that robot? Will also be gay, so get used to it:

we didn’t manifest the mountain by speaking its name,
the buildings here are not on your side just because
you make them spray-painted accomplices.
These walls do not have genders and they all think you suck.
Even the earth found common cause with us
the way you trample us both,

oh yeah: there will be signs, and rainbow-colored drum circles,
and folks arguing ideology until even I want to punch them
but I won’t, because they’re my family,
in that blood-of-the-covenant sense.
If you’ve never loved someone like that
you cannot outwaltz us, we have all the good dancers anyway.

I’ll confess I don’t know if I’m alive right now;
I haven’t heard my heart beat in days,
I keep holding my breath for the moment the plane goes down
and I have to save enough oxygen to get my friends through.

But I finally found the argument against suicide and it’s us.
We’re the effigies that haunt America’s nights harder
the longer they spend burning us,
we are scaring the shit out of people by spreading,
by refusing to die: what are we but a fire?
We know everything we do is so the kids after us
will be able to follow something towards safety;
what can I call us but lighthouse,

of course I’m terrified. Of course I’m a shroud.
And of course it’s not fair but rest assured,
anxious America, you brought your fists to a glitter fight.
This is a taco truck rally and all you have is cole slaw.
You cannot deport our minds; we won’t
hold funerals for our potential. We have always been
what makes America great.

Bloodbath of a sneakernet.

The Incomparable, “I Refuse To Call It a Prequel”

Hope is a powerful weapon.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, “The Inner Light”

Robert M. Price, “Recommended Reading List”