Collected Links (06/08/2022)

•  "Orson Wells" on the "Transgender  Question." Via Tim.
•  Also via Tim, a series of tweets by Lindsey Simmons on dark money in Missouri and their nasty business. These tweets, of course, are exactly right and very informative. Simmons is running for US Congress in MO 4th Congressional District, which is overwhelming conservative. It went 2/3 for Trump in the last 2 Presidential elections. She is running to replace Vicky Hartzler, who is running for Senate In MO. Hartzler herself is a real piece of work. A former high school home economics teacher, her political stances, as listed on Wikipedia, are a laundry list of every nasty and wrongheaded political position a US politician could take.
• Open Secrets -- the best site I know tracking political donations.
• Werner Herzog writes novel, feels "he has finally found his medium." NYT, free registration required.
• NYT print edition today has an article titled "C.E.O. Earnings Soar, Widening the Pay Gap," written by Stephen Gandel. I can't find it online by title, author, or keywords. Hmmmm . . . why NYT why?
• The school murders in Uvalde, Texas, are horrible and heartbreaking. The testimony of the parents of victims, testimony of a child who survived, and the testimony of a Uvalde pediatrician is overwhelming and terrible. The politicians (overwhelmingly, almost exclusively Republicans) who refuse to meaningfully address it are now acting well below "politics as usual," and worthy of our disgust. I would casually compare them to the police officers who sat in the hallway of the school and refused to confront the gunman for 45 minutes, but they are well below that threshold, too.