Morning Belz, Feb. 19

Freedom dispatch from Daytona.

The new video from Daytona is here. Posted a 7 minute 40 second version to Patreon yesterday and then chopped more than two minutes from it late last night. I think it turned out well. Nice little window into 2021 America. 

I especially like the woman who said, “We can be OK if we want to be OK.” The COVID discussion toward the end of the video will stress a lot of you out. Is there a freer place in America than Florida?

If you use Reddit, do me a solid and drop in and boost the video with an upvote.

And please consider subscribing to Scuffed News on Patreon. The goal is 500 patrons at $5 a month by the Fourth of July. Won’t be easy, long way to go, but I’m optimistic! Have a good weekend.

—
Space rover lands on Mars to search for signs of extinct life* — USA Today
Touchdown confirmed in the control room — NASA
Macron: American academia is a threat to France — NYT
Work on stuff that’s not prestigious** — Paul Graham
CEO confidence hits 17-year high — Axios
Wilkinson’s long piece on Slate Star Codex v NYT — Model Citizen

*you could also say it’s searching for signs of death, but that doesn’t sound quite right
**wow, do I feel seen

Quotes
“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” — David Foster Wallace

About: I was a newspaper reporter for 14 years, most recently at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I explained why my family left Minneapolis here. Now we live just outside Chattanooga and I work on Scuffed News, a project that either succeeds by July or will have to be abandoned. Please subscribe. Please share this newsletter with anyone you think might enjoy it. You can support this work with your money on Patreon.