Too much political news

Anyone who is in touch with reality and follows the news knows Donald Trump is corrupt, ignorant, incompetent, reckless, immature, and pathologically narcissistic. What does that say about the 40% of US voters still think he's doing a fine job?

It's quite obvious he has cost 10s of thousands of US lives by his failure to address the COVID-19 pandemic with any other goal than to get re-elected. His response to the public outcry about police violence against black citizens has been to threaten using the US military to stop the wave of protests still sweeping across the nation. Now, his AG, William Barr, has attempted to fire US Attorney Geoffrey Berman, who is investigating Trump's business practices, Rudy Giuliani's shenanigans, and  other cases Trump would like to make disappear, by a press release saying Berman was stepping down. Upon learning this, Berman stated boldly he was doing no such thing and would not leave office until his replacement was approved by the US Senate, in accordance with the law. Apparently, any effort to fire Berman will be resolved in Federal court and will take months to litigate,  Then, there's the MAGA rally in Tulsa today that meets the CDC criteria for maximum riskiness.

It appears a significant majority of voters have grown weary of Trump who, by all these actions is sinking his own chances to be re-elected, thank God.

Points and lines

I recall a defining moment of my life when I sat in my desk at school watching and listening as the teacher presented the basics of geometry. The idea of a line composed of infinite points consisting of nothing but a location intrigued and fascinated me. I contemplated for some time how this made intuitive sense and yet was incomprehensible until I looked up and realized the lesson had kept moving and left me behind. To this day I don't think I've ever caught up. In a meaningful way I'm still sitting in my desk trying to get my mind around these ideas.

Experts

Not all "experts" are created equal. A trustworthy expert has credentials and belongs to an organized scientific discipline whose members scrutinize one another's research and public statement's and hold one another accountable. An authentic expert holds up under fact-checking.

Knowledge and trust

Most of what we know depends on trusting our sources of information. If there's no process of fact-checking and accountability, we're vulnerable to being manipulated into believing falsehoods by unscrupulous actors.