Sunday Morning Reading – Page 15 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Some Sunday Morning Reading to share. If you’re new to this now regular feature on Wicked Stage, you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. As always, it’s a varied collection of links. Some I find fun. Some informative. Some just weird. Regardless they caught my attention and I hope they catch yours.

The Debt Limit is Just One of American’s Six Worst Traditions. Lots of talk about the US Debt Limit debate at the moment. Here’s a look from John Schwarz and others at The Debt Limit and five other silly/stupid/bad political traditions in the US. Bet you’ll learn something from this one.

The Story Behind the Chicago Newspaper That Bought a Bar. Great read about a newspaper’s investigative unit and the lengths they went to exposing some Chicago backroom political shenanigans. By Andy Wright.

Why The Supreme Court is Blind to Corruption. By Randall Eliason in the NY Times.

And while we’re talking about the Supreme Court. How about an article from Gillian Brockell discussing the only impeachment of a Supreme Court Justice in an article called: Can a Supreme Court Justice Be Impeached? Meet ‘Old Bacon Face.’

The Battle of Beach Rowdies, B-Girls, and Disorderly Women. An excerpt from Robert Loerzel’s series on The Coolest Spot in Chicago: A History of Green Mill Gardens and the Beginnings of Uptown. (You can find much more on his site by following his links. Well worth your time.)

Rudy Giuliani, Timothy McVeigh, and Sexual Abuse. Teri Canfield weaves a few threads together, that should remind us all just how tangled this twisted mess we’re dealing with today really is.

The Song That Spawned the Four Chords of Pop by Tim Coffman. Fun stuff.

This Little-known Rule Shapes Parking in America. Cities Are Reversing It. By Nathaniel Myerson. “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot…”

Apple announced some very interesting new accessibility features coming later this year. John Vorhees of MacStories did an interview with David Niemeijer of AssistiveWare, a company that makes augmentative and alternative communication apps for the iPhone and the iPad about how these kind of features can beneift real-world users.

Book Banning is all the rage. Not for the first time. Check out Book Bans Soared in the 70’s, too. The Supreme Court Stepped In. By Anthony Aycock.

Have a good week.

Sunday Morning Reading was a regular feature back in my previous blogging days. I thought I’d continue it here. The idea originally came about because I used to love to read multiple newspapers on Sunday mornings. Some of you might remember those days when Sunday morning newspapers were chock-a-block with stories of all kinds, featuring information (we now call it content) on a variety of topics. Newspapers used to save up their best stuff for the Sunday edition.

DALL E 2023 05 13 10 50 03 newspapers stacked on a porch table in black and white

Well, the Internet has replaced all of that. But I still do my Sunday morning reading. So this feature is nothing more, nothing less than a series of links to items and writers (with occasional commentary) I find interesting, informative, and indicative of things we are or should be thinking of in this moment. Typically I’ve discovered this in the week prior. Sometimes I actually do on Sunday mornings. For better or worse, the Internet has turned me into a prolific sharer of things I find interesting and here we are.

Note, I read a lot of different sources. Some with opinions I agree with. Some with opinions I disagree with. So you’ll find a bit of both here. I happen to believe in and enjoy exploring writers, opinions, and subjects that I disagree with. I think you should too. In fact I encourage it.

So on with this first Act 3 edition of Sunday Morning Reading.

Ben Franklin Would Have Loved Bluesky. Annalee Newitz’s take on the moment in social media. The headline skewers what the article is actually about. Worth a read if social media is your thing.

The Epic Battle No One Wanted, Or Asked For by David Todd McCarty. McCarty is a writer I’ve gotten to know since signing up on Mastodon“>Mastodon. Glad I did. His stuff is always thought provoking and often fun. Like this piece on The Magic And Mystery of Pommes Frites.

The Hedonic Treadmill – Are We Forever Chasing Rainbows by Seph Fontane Pennock A bit academic, but it’s about the temporary joys of happiness.

A Guilty Ex-President. Lots of folks don’t like David French and also don’t like that he’s writing for the NY Times. I don’t agree with a lot of his thinking, but when I want my thinking challenged I’m typically glad he’s writing about a subject I’ve been thinking on. His takes on religion and the law go far beneath the surface spewing we so much of these days.

The Billion-Dollar Ponzi Scheme That Hooked Warren Buffett And The U.S. Treasury by Ariel Sabar. A great story in and of itself, but viewed with a wider lens says so much about where we are.

Deskilling On The Job from zephoria. If the age of AI an interesting look at the future of work.

The Last Gamble of Tokyo Joe A Chicago mob story in Chicago Magazine by Dan O’Sullivan

Students’ Understanding Of History and Civics Is Worsening by Donna St. Geroge in the Washington Post. Well, given that this has been the plan for a generation or so, I guess it’s a good thing we’re discovering that the plan is working to our detriment.

And since this is a Mother’s Day edition of Sunday Morning Reading here’s a link to an origin story about Mother’s Day from Olivia B. Waxman in Time