Hump day link-oh-rama

Some odds and ends you may have missed during your holiday shopping:

*** Bill Gates recommends 5 books for the holidays. Spoiler alert:

“Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup,” by John Carreyrou
“Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War,” by Paul Scharre
“21 Lessons for the 21st Century,” by Yuval Noah Harari
“Educated: A Memoir,” by Tara Westover
“The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness,” by Andy Puddicombe

*** Why I deleted my Twitter account

*** ‘A kind of dark realism’: Why the climate change problem is starting to look too big to solve.

*** Also in the WaPo: A Rapid City priest gets a sympathetic woe-is-me story done on him. If he were an NFL coach he'd be fired by now.

He did not bristle with anger or speak in disgust. There were no echoes of the new calls to end the vow of celibacy or grant women more power. He did not apologize, on behalf of the Catholic Church or on behalf of himself, even if the abuse allegedly had happened on his watch, because he didn’t know what to apologize for.

Just a thought, maybe it's time for some anger and disgust. (I've got plenty if the Church wants to borrow some.) But I suppose that would hamper his efforts of being promoted to bishop.

*** Cigars: A love story or two

*** On the topic of smoking, I've read a couple pro-vaping stories lately, here's one.

*** Camille Paglia is always interesting.

I contend that every educated person should be conversant with the sacred texts, rituals, and symbol systems of the great world religions — Hinduism, Buddhism, Judeo-Christianity, and Islam — and that true global understanding is impossible without such knowledge.
-
Too many young people raised in affluent liberal homes are arriving at elite colleges and universities with skittish, unformed personalities and shockingly narrow views of human existence, confined to inflammatory and divisive identity politics.
-
I have yet to see a single profile of (Jordan) Peterson, even from sympathetic journalists, that accurately portrays the vast scope, tenor, and importance of his work.
-
Humor has been assassinated. An off word at work or school will get you booted to the gallows. This is the graveyard of liberalism, whose once noble ideals have turned spectral and vampiric.

*** An example of said assassination.