More than three-quarters of Americans say religion’s role in public life is shrinking, per a recent Pew Research Center survey — the highest level since the group first started tracking such sentiment in 2001.
A separate Gallup survey published this week found that Latter-day Saints are the only religious group wherein a majority say they attend services weekly, at 54%.
30% of Protestants say they attend services weekly, compared to 28% of Muslims, 23% of Catholics and 16% of Jews.
Excellent interview in The New Yorker by David Remnick. Not sure if the piece is behind a paywall or not but it’s a good read.
“That’s the way you go through life. You only care about laughing and being funny.”
“And I don’t like old people, either. Even though I’m seventy—I don’t like old people. […] They don’t look good. Everything’s going. Everything’s deteriorating. I don’t want to see this. If you want to hang around, fine, but we’re moving on to younger people. I’m with you up to about thirty-eight. If you want to stay, you can stay, but I’m moving on.”
“There were no sitcoms picked up on the fall season of all four networks. Not one. No new sitcoms.”
A lot of rich people don’t even realize they’re rich. Here are some clues:
— It’s Training Cats and Dogs
The following statistics are from an article by Matric Broz at phototutorial.com. The article presents “photography and photo statistics procured with scientific and mathematical methods, including answering questions like “How many photos are taken every day?”
There is a seemingly endless variety of genres on YouTube, and one that has been showing up in my feed more frequently of late is what I call the “driving tour of small town America” videos. During my many years, on the road in the Midwest, I had occasion to drive through lots and lots of small rural towns, so I’ve found this series interesting.
The video above offers a rather depressing look at four towns in southeast Missouri: Caruthersville, Hayti, Kennett, and Cardwell. Some of the demographic statistics were almost as bleak and shocking as the images.
This direct mail marketing piece showed up in our mailbox yesterday. Two things immediately caught my eye: the model didn’t look like he spent hours in the gym every day, his body looked more like a normal person’s body. And the tattoos. Lots and lots of tattoos.
According to a 2023 survey by Pew Research, 41% of Americans under the age of 30 have at least one tattoo. And we’re not talking high-grade Yakuza-class fine art here. These tats look like something you could get in the strip mall. Once again, I turned to ChatGPT for some insight on this cultural phenomenon.
“The country had changed since the last time he d been through this way. Many of the little country towns, which had seemed prosperous, even smug, back in the seventies when he’d last made this drive, had been hollowed out, their storefronts empty, their economies wasted by out-migration, the collapse of small farming, the big box stores; their civic life was composed largely of the high school football team, the big signs painted on the water tank, the brick walls of the low, sunburned buildings: GO COUGARS! GO HAWKS! GO REBELS! On the dusty streets of towns named for nineteenth-century cattlemen, pioneers, heroes of the Civil War, they now saw few descendants of such people, only little clots of dark-skinned men and signs in Spanish. The Indians were slowly reconquering the land, for the white people had everything but enough children, and the children they did have wanted the life they saw on television, not the life of the small American towns.”
— The Return by Michael Gruber
The following is from the Autumn 2015 issue of Air Cooled News (An Official Publication of The Franklin Club)
In 1933, The Reo Automobile Company shipped 800 leftover 1933 Reo “Flying Clouds” to the Franklin Automobile Company. Franklin engines were installed and they were sold as 1933 Franklin “Olympics.”
In 1934 Reo still had unsold “Flying Clouds” so they decided to cut them off behind the front door and build pickup trucks. It is possible that at least one of these pickup trucks was shipped to Franklin where an air cooled 1934 Franklin engine was installed and it was sold as a 1934 Franklin “Speed Wagon.” If that did happen, the truck cold have looked exactly like this one.
In 2012, Wes Scott traded a Model A truck for the remains of a 1933 Franklin “Olympic.” This would provide the chassis for the Franklin “Speed Wagon.” In 2013 Wes’ son Donald found a 1934 Reo Speed Wagon in Shaniko, Oregon. This would provide the cab.
The bed for the “Speed Wagon” came from a Reo pickup in West Plains, Missouri. Richard Harry of Wisconsin provided an extra set of fenders so pickup rear fenders could be made from two sets of sedan fenders.
Another Franklin Club member, Ed Joy of Idaho provided a nice green hood that matched what was left of the original paint on the cab. The goal was to make all the pieces look like they came on the truck originally and to build a truck that could be used and enjoyed. At the Fall Midwest Region Meet in Clinton, MO the comments ranged from “When are you going to paint it?” to “Don’t touch it we like it.”
Wes is going with “Don’t touch it.”
Wes’ garage/shop/farm is just about 20 minutes from where I live and some car buddies drove me down and introduced me. Wes was kind enough to let me record a little video (5 min) of his amazing collection of Franklins and Model A Fords.
This brief video barely scratched the surface (you should forgive the expression) of Wes’s amazing collection. I hope to have another opportunity share some more.
Following thoughts from an article (Chicken Littles Are Ruining America) by David Brooks in The Atlantic. (No link because it’s behind a paywall). He warns “doomsaying can become a self-fulfilling prophecy)
Being negative also helps you appear smart. In a classic 1983 study by the psychologist Teresa Amabile, authors of scathingly negative book reviews were perceived as more intelligent than the authors of positive reviews. Intellectually insecure people tend to be negative because they think it displays their brain power.
Believing in vicious conspiracy theories can also boost your self-esteem: You are the superior mind who sees beneath the surface into the hidden realms where evil cabals really run the world. You have true knowledge of how the world works, which the masses are too naive to see. Conspiracy theories put you in the role of the truth-telling hero. Paranoia is the opiate of those who fear they may be insignificant.
While endlessly scrolling through the hundreds (thousands?) of movie titles in Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, HBO Max, and all the other streaming services, I flashed back to my youth (‘50s and ‘60s) when watching a movie on TV was a rare treat. Following from Wikipedia:
NBC Saturday Night at the Movies was the first TV show to broadcast relatively recent feature films from major studios. The series premiered on September 23, 1961, and ran until October 1978, spawning many imitators. Previously, television stations had been only been able to show older, low-budget, black-and-white films that wouldn’t be shown at movie theaters. In the late 1970s, competition from cable television and home video led to a decline in viewership.
It’s difficult to convey what a treat it was to watch a feature-length movie on network TV. The “late show” usually came on right after the ten o’clock news and ran into the wee hours with lots of commercials. We could never have imagined watching almost any film ever produced. Never mind on-demand streaming to a hand-held device.
