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Truly, ‘Here Be Dragons’ and This Remained One Until Juneteenth
It took two years after President Lincoln signed the ‘Emancipation Proclamation’ for news of it to reach the slaves in Texas.
And here in the United States today, it has been only about five years since ‘Juneteenth,’ commemorating that 1855 event, became a Federal holiday.
Professor Barbara Walter out at UCSD wrote about this holiday in her June 17 ‘Here Be Dragons’ posting with a piece that all should read and study. Click here or copy and paste https://barbarafwalter.substack.com/ on your device’s browser line, to learn the lessons that facing up to instituted evils can ultimately teach us, and why such evils must be avoided even today.
JL
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The Joys of Living in One’s Own Reality
Those who are celebrating President Trump’s successfully ending the war he started with Iran three and a half months ago as a victory can join with those who believe the San Antonio Spurs defeated the New York Knicks for the NBA title and that the Las Vegas Golden Knights won the Stanley Cup by defeating the Carolina Hurricanes.
Believing something does not make it true, no matter how hard you try.
(Of course, for those who don’t follow sports, the New York Knicks and the Carolina Hurricanes each won their league’s championships. Now I can go to bed a bit earlier.)
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Once the ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ is signed by Vice President Vance, if indeed that ceremony even takes place on Friday, the real negotiations will commence. From a historical viewpoint, it might be that President Trump wanted to avoid putting his name on wherever this ‘Memorandum’ may lead.
In any event, here is the actual text of what was intended to be signed on Friday, accompanied by commentary on each part by knowledgeable New York Times reporters. To get there, click here or copy and paste https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/us/politics/us-iran-agreement-deal-text.html on your device’s browser line. (If you cannot access it that way, I can email a copy to you if you wish.)
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There are so many bases to touch in order to keep up with what is really going on in the world and in this country today that I will leave that task to Professor Heather Cox Richardson who does a great job in her ‘Letters from an American’ each day. Her June 15 posting is a great example. Click here or copy and paste https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ on your device’s browser line to get there.
JL
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A State of Flux
After some Google searching, Artificial Intelligence came up with this, a Cambridge English Dictionary’s definition which seems to make sense in describing the world in which we live.
"A ‘state of flux’ means a situation is unstable, constantly changing, and not yet settled or fixed. Derived from the Latin word fluere (meaning "to flow"), it describes conditions that are in transition, where final arrangements or outcomes remain undetermined.”
Yes, but I didn’t need AI to conclude that.
JL
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A Poison That is Contaminating the Internet
So you have a nice monitor, tablet, or even telephone, none of which came into your hands inexpensively. And it supposedly has opened the world of communication and ideas, beyond using it for email, to you. Hah!
That was initially the case until the purveyors of news and opinion discovered three magic words, ‘Upgrade to Paid,’ turning the internet into something like a newspaper that only published headlines but no articles about what those headlines announced.
Such upgrading to get at the stories behind the headlines can end up costing more than did the device you use to access the internet and the software you pay for to accomplish that!
Sometimes, before those three dread words appear, a site might tell you a tempting portion of a story, but that is only bait to get you to ‘Upgrade to Paid.’ Nevertheless, a few sites, including Professor Richardson's and Paul Krugman's, give you a decent amount of information before their 'paywalls' confront you.
Some believe government regulation can remedy this situation, but wouldn’t that give government a choke hold on the dissemination of news and opinion?
JL
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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is jacklippman18@gmail.com.
Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it (Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.) If you want to send someone the blog, you can just tell them to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or you can provide a link to that address in your email to them.
There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though! Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible. If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a brief comment from you. Each will receive a link to click on that will directly connect them to the blog. Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com , or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting.
Email Alerts: If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do. And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com
More on the Sources of Information in Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered local daily ‘printed’ newspaper (now the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors, including the New York Times and other respected journals.
Be aware that when I open that email, I first quickly glance at and screen out those sent to my very old former email address and those considered ‘promotional’ by Gmail’s system as no more than advertisements or requests for donations.
Besides these sources, I also utilize the Google search engine where I can look up any subject I want. Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri.
Following such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. Unlike the usually anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than any AI summary.
It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect.
Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence. Always!
JL
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