Some stuff:

Really good review by Randall Stephens of the kind of bad book about providence that, in the hands of a skilled reader, can provoke some deep theological questions:

"It’s one thing to appreciate how religion or ideas about providence inspired Americans in the 1860s or the 1890s. It’s quite something else to say that modern Americans should read the distant past as confirmation of the nation’s divine appointment. Medved wonders why Americans are not more thankful “for winning life’s lottery through your American birth or upbringing.” America being blessed by God, he writes, may defy “the ordinary odds but conforms to our lived experience.” That perspective, while full of hope and optimism, amounts to a selective reading of the past. It ignores a large swath of the U.S. population such as African Americans and Native Americans whose lived experience often has not felt like winning a lottery.

Medved’s style of popular conservative history is in large measure defined by what he leaves out. The shameful, racist, violent aspects of the American narrative are swept away or excused. He gives little attention to the treatment of Native Americans, the crucial role slavery played in the country’s development, wars of imperial expansion and colonial acquisition, and the horrors and follies of the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

In his celebration of the glories of the Transcontinental Railroad, Medved makes little or no room for discussion of the exploitation of workers, unfair and criminal business practices, the destruction of wildlife and natural habitats, or discrimination against Chinese immigrants. Those, too, are essential parts of the story. The racist Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned immigration of Chinese laborers, is not even mentioned. How should modern Americans read these episodes, which earlier Americans explained and justified in explicitly religious terms?"

The whole thing is good, and can provoke good, hard thinking.

Middle class income in the US is shrinking as a percentage of US income in general.  Compared to the "one percent" this is stupendously true, but it's true for other income levels as well, including the poorest:

"The rapid growth at the top is the most eye-catching trend, for sure. But it is by definition a story about a very small minority. Taking them out of the picture allows a closer examination of the trends within the bottom 99% (not least because the vertical axis can be altered). 

Incomes in the middle class (by our definition, the middle 60% of households) have lagged since 1979, growing just half as fast as those in the bottom 20% and the top 81-99%, once taxes and transfers (including health care) are taken into account."

A nice little list of books, but he is wrong about the non-prophetic nature of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and he totally misses the way that William Gibson’s Neuromancer was also incredibly prophetic.

Finally: I think this is right, and The Rise of Skywalker is bloated and distended with corporate trash.  So many remakes and extensions and film versions of beloved works from earlier generations have come out in recent years, and so much of it is crap, just crap.  Is this a cultural trend?  Or am I just a grumpy middle-ager?  I suppose it's not an either/or.