Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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(Our World in Data) Childhood stunting fell dramatically over the 20th century
What can countries with high stunting rates today learn from Japan’s experience of going from 70% to 5%?
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(The Comics Curmudgeon) Mmm … sandwich
Comics Curmudgeon readers! Do you love this blog and yearn for a novel written by its creator? Well, good news: Josh Fruhlinger’s The Enthusiast is that novel! It’s even about newspaper comic strips, partly. Check it out! Judge Parker, 5/10/26 There have been hints in this strip that Judge Parker Senior is slipping away into…
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(Policy of Truth) NJ-12: The Trance Is the Motion
I’ve so far received campaign literature or text messages from seven of the candidates in the NJ-12 congressional race: Sue Altman, Brad Cohen, Adam Hamawy, Adrian Mapp, Verlina Reynolds-Jackson, Shanel Robinson, and Squire Servance. Of these, Hamawy is the only one who’s mentioned ending the Iran War as an explicit part of his pitch. The…
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(A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry) Collections: Raising Carthaginian Armies, Part IV: Allies and Mercenaries
This is the fourth part of our series (I, II, III, IV, V) looking at how Carthage’s complex, multi-ethnic armies were raised and structured. Last week, we looked at Carthage’s unusual system for raising vassal forces: long-serving Carthaginian generals could inhabit positions within the personalist, non-state mobilization systems of Numidia and Iberia, enabling them to…
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(The Comics Curmudgeon) The old men and the Friday
Comics Curmudgeon readers! Do you love this blog and yearn for a novel written by its creator? Well, good news: Josh Fruhlinger’s The Enthusiast is that novel! It’s even about newspaper comic strips, partly. Check it out! Beetle Bailey, 5/8/26 I honestly am not sure if the joke here is simply “Lt. Fuzz is humiliated…
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(Policy of Truth) Charlie Kratovil for Mayor of New Brunswick
Though I don’t live in New Brunswick, and can’t vote in its municipal elections, I commute through the city ten times a week, and spend time there just about every week. I also have a strong interest, as do all of us in this area, in the workings of New Brunswick’s major institutions: Rutgers University,…
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(xkcd.com) Crystal Gazing
This is a syndicated post, originally published by xkcd.com at xkcd.com.
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(The Comics Curmudgeon) He’ll wait for her, motionless, in that same room, indefinitely
Comics Curmudgeon readers! Do you love this blog and yearn for a novel written by its creator? Well, good news: Josh Fruhlinger’s The Enthusiast is that novel! It’s even about newspaper comic strips, partly. Check it out! Gil Thorp, 5/7/26 See that girl in the second panel, sort of squinting at Gil and Coach Gerads…
Got any book recommendations?