Albert Einstein said it’s a form of insanity to keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result. So, if you want something different, do something different, or change your expectations, or both.
In my own life, I’ve found that adjusting my expectations has made a big difference in my ability to enjoy my life.
A few weeks ago I started learning Irish via an app.
The lessons progress like any foreign language course. Start with food and water and how to get them. Gloine uisce, le do thoil. A glass of water, please.
Step outside and describe the weather. Tá sé grianmhar. It’s sunny. Or Tá sé dorcha agus scamallach. It’s dark and cloudy.
The Republican-led House of Representatives passed on April 10, 2025, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act – or SAVE Act. The bill would make voting harder for tens of millions of Americans.
The SAVE Act would require anyone registering to vote in federal elections to first “provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship” in person, like a REAL ID or a passport.
One of the things that fascinates me about Americans living today is the willingness of many of them to treat immigrants like horse dung. I just don’t get it. No, I’m not saying that they treat people like that directly. I’m saying that they support and even get excited about how the U.S. government treats immigrants like horse dung.
Consider what the U.S. government has done to migrants it has sent to El Salvador. Pursuant to a deal that U.S. officials have entered into with the Salvadoran government that involved payment of $6 million in U.S. taxpayer money, U.S. officials are sending migrants to that country to be incarcerated in a brutal prison in which it is common knowledge that torture and other horrific human-rights abuses are taking place.
President Donald Trump told an NBC interviewer on March 30, 2025 that he was “not joking” about a third term as president, despite such a term being barred by the Constitution.
“There are methods which you could do it,” he said in the interview.
For months, Trump has been hinting – in joking tones – that he’s interested in finding a way to continue in the White House past the legal limit of two terms. But the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution is clear that Trump can’t be elected again. The text of the amendment states:
Frank is a new supervisor who wants to do well. Maria consistently comes in late. When he confronts her, she makes a joke out of it.
Hoping to win friendship and loyalty, Frank is painfully patient with her, but Pat, a conscientious employee, urges him to do more. Soon others begin to come in late, and Pat quits. Frank feels victimized, but he has no one to blame but himself.
Congress may soon consider whether to cut spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the main way the government helps low-income Americans put food on the table. The Conversation U.S. asked Tracy Roof, a political scientist who has researched the history of government nutrition programs, to explain what’s going on and why the effort to reduce spending on SNAP benefits, which can be used to purchase groceries, could falter.
I teach history in Connecticut, but I grew up in Oklahoma and Kansas, where my interest in the subject was sparked by visits to local museums.
I fondly remember trips to the Fellow-Reeves Museum in Wichita, Kansas and the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. A 1908 photograph of my great-grandparents picking cotton has been used as a poster by the Oklahoma Historical Society.
This love of learning history continued into my years as a graduate student of history, when I would spend hours at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum learning about the history of human flight and ballooning. As a professor, I’ve integrated the institution’s exhibits into my history courses.
The Trump administration, however, is not happy with the way the Smithsonian Institution and other U.S. museums are portraying history.
There are two sorts of conservatism.
There’s the kind espoused by the 18th-century British politician Edmund Burke. It emphasizes restraint; reverence for tradition and maintaining political and social order through mutual duty. Laws must prevent mob rule at the bottom and tyranny at the top. Change is acceptable but not revolution. One should work with the world as it is, inside a moral framework aware of human shortcomings.
The U.S. operates one of the largest and most punitive criminal justice systems in the world. On any given day, 1.9 million people are incarcerated in more than 6,000 federal, state, and local facilities. Another 3.7 million remain under what scholars call “correctional control” through probation or parole supervision.
That means one out of every 60 Americans is entangled in the system — one of the highest rates globally.
