As Gen Z ditch books at record levels, students are arriving to classrooms unable to complete assigned reading on par with previous expectations.
...
“It’s not even an inability to critically think,” Jessica Hooten Wilson, a professor of great books and humanities at Pepperdine University, told Fortune. “It’s an inability to read sentences.”
...
Nearly half of all Americans did not read a single book in 2025, with the habit plunging some 40% over the last decade.
...
“Even when you read it in class with them, there’s so much they can’t process about the very words that are on the page.”

It must be the Boomer generations fault. We read too much thus making it uncool.

The Tennessee Department of Transportation now expects work on the section of the Alcoa Highway Corridor Project from Woodson Drive to Cherokee Trail to be finished in Spring 2030.

Crews began working on this section in July 2023. At the time, 6 News reported that the section was projected to be finished in Fall 2027. The timeline was adjusted after engineers determined that there needed to be more wall enforcement near the Woodson Drive interchange to ensure long-term stability, TDOT said Thursday.

Drivers should continue to expect rolling roadblocks and other traffic control measures.

Yowza! It's an experience getting from South of the river (Alcoa Hwy side) and Blount County to UT Hospital. It's all in the timing or leaving an hour early.

The President "on Tuesday night appeared to defend his latest military strikes on Iran by posting a short clip from “The West Wing,” the popular NBC television drama about a fictional U.S. president, in which the show’s characters debate their own military action."

I was at the grocery store last week and the senior citizen behind me had a handful of $100 bills and some gift cards or prepaid credit cards, couldn't tell which. I was immediately concerned if she was getting scammed.

What do you do? What does the retailer do? I went and asked a manager if they have any procedure to ensure the woman was not getting scammed. The manager said they have no procedure and cannot interfere. I let it go. I can only hope the woman wasn't getting scammed.

However, for the future, banks and retailers need to adopt procedures to prevent senior citizens, or anyone, from losing there savings to a scammer.

With cybercrime continuing to rise, some banks are testing new prevention strategies. JPMorgan Chase hired a behavioral scientist.

The University of Tennessee Board of Trustees will consider proposals to increase undergraduate in-state tuition and mandatory fees for certain UT campuses during the Board’s annual meeting on June 30, 2026.

Tennessee law (Tennessee Code Annotated § 49-7-1603) requires boards of public universities to give public notice of proposed increases to tuition and mandatory fees charged to in-state undergraduate students at least fifteen (15) days prior to holding a public meeting to adopt the increases.

No tuition increase proposed for Knoxville campus, but there is a $148 (6.4%) mandatory fee increase. There are proposed tuition and fee increases for UT Chattanooga ($192/$130), UT Martin ($272/$52), and UT Southern ($298/$40) .

The comment period will close Monday, June 22, at 6pm Eastern/5pm Central.

UT in-state tuition/fees are more expensive than Alabama, Florida, and Georgia.

‘I’ve Had Enough!’ Trump Storms Out of Meet the Press Interview in Wild Fashion — Explodes On NBC’s Kristen Welker After She Hits Him With Fact Checks"
...
Welker pressed.

“But there is no evidence that people who—” Welker said, before Trump interjected.

Video

Bravo Kristen Welker. A strong woman. The President went rabid. I thought he was going to attack her.

Fact-checking Trump’s interview with NBC News’ ‘Meet the Press’

Several diabetes experts were escorted out of an influential medical conference by the police on Friday after they handed out copies of an editorial criticizing the Trump administration’s attacks on scientific research.
...
The researchers were handing out copies of the editorial, recently published in the association’s flagship journal, which detailed the effects of N.I.H. cuts and other Trump administration actions on diabetes research and outcomes, when security staff asked them to step outside and tried to take away the papers...

Video: Police Tussle With Diabetes Experts at ADA Meeting

Tactics from the 30s, 40s, 50s.

I sent a question via a retail business chat bot. A very simple question. They responded 6 times asking me to rephrase my question. There are only so many ways you can provide a very simple question. Alas, I gave up and they lost a sale.

Republican candidate for Knox County sheriff, Mike Davis, is contesting the Republican Primary for sheriff after two of the former candidates were indicted.

The Tennessee Republican Party board has announced that it will meet at the TNGOP Headquarters next week to decide which Knox County Sheriff's candidate will be on the ballot in August...
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Just days after the election, second-place candidate David Amburn and fourth-place candidate Jimmy "J.J." Jones were indicted on felony charges of theft...
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State GOP chairman Scott Golden told 10News that during the June 10th meeting, anyone will be allowed to express their concerns to the board about the primary results.

Well... I could look at it a different way. The indicted candidates are still considered innocent, thus the primary election is valid, thus whoever won wins.

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis, TN) announced that he is filing six articles of impeachment against the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Roberts.
...
The six articles of impeachment were summarized by Cohen in a statement:

1) The Chief Justice has allowed the court to become a partisan force, breaking the constitutional guarantee of a republican form of government.
2) Under Roberts’ leadership, the court has systemically given preferential treatment to the wealthy over the people.
3) The Chief Justice has violated his oath of office to do, “equal right to the poor and the rich” by endorsing a campaign finance system that favors the wealthy at the expense of the citizenry.
4) The Chief Justice violated the Constitution and judicial oath by usurping Congressional legislative roles and exempting the President from criminal liability for his conduct.
5) The Chief Justice’s leadership has made decisions in an arbitrary, unexplained, and inconsistent way that violates Constitutional protections.
6) Chief Justice Roberts violated statutory and ethical obligations regarding financial disclosures such as reporting assets which presented the perception of conflicts of interest.

From House.gov
Congressman Cohen Introduces Six Articles of Impeachment Against Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts

The President "has at various points in the last few weeks said he doesn’t care about the negotiations to end his Iran war, about the upcoming 2026 midterms in which Republicans may take a big hit because of his administration, or about Americans’ financial situations."

“It’s a new message,” Democratic strategist James Carville said. “I’ve never in all my years in politics, I’ve never heard the leader of a political party say ‘I don’t care if we win the election or not, matters nothing to me.’”

Another first for the President.

Comics by Jeff Stahler

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier on Monday sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging that the company marketed ChatGPT to the public without sufficiently warning of its dangers.

I'm not that wild about Florida's government. However, I do think they might have something in this lawsuit. It's amazing how many people don't understand Googling for information much less using AI to get answers.

Indeterminate. Schrodinger's cat. a hypothetical cat in a closed box may be considered to be simultaneously both alive and dead while it is unobserved.

Uncertainty. there is a limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties, such as position and momentum, can be simultaneously known.

So there you go. Watching Jeopardy turns into some interesting conversations.

Smith & Wesson opened a new facility in the past couple of years. Not sure if they are manufacturing, but they are definitely making some noise.

Smith & Wesson Academy opened in September and includes a shoothouse, pistol range, flex range and rifle range. Instructor and former SEAL Chief Warrant Officer Mark T. Cochiolo oversees the courses offered there. As of publication, none of the academy’s nine listed courses were available for sign-up, though seven included course descriptions.

Those descriptions showed participants could receive between 200 and 400 rounds of ammunition per course. Former Louisville Mayor and attorney Tom Bickers said residents have complained about hearing thousands of rounds fired each day.
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Now the firearms company wants to build a Lodging Facility... "much to the chagrin of residential neighbors who fear the move will only increase activity at the site’s already noisy training facilities."
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"The Industrial Development Board has implemented a process to actually measure that [weapons noise]. The equipment just came in last week, and so they are scheduled to go along the property line and measure."

It's unimaginable how disconcerting it would be to have firearms going off that many times a day where you can hear it from your front porch. Is Blount County losing it's luster? Someone should have to buy these people out so they can leave the noise behind.

The musical lineup for President Donald Trump’s “Freedom 250” concert series, marketed as the “Great American State Fair,” has been remarkably hard to keep up-to-date. Just one day after it was announced, two-thirds of the musical acts have dropped out — some even saying they had no idea they were performing at this event or were misled about it being “political”

Morris Day and the Time, The Commodores, Martina McBride, Young MC, Milli Vanilli, Bret Michaels have all backed out. Maybe Bruce Springsteen will come up with an acceptable Freedom concert.

White House before and after.

We're so proud. (:

Top White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett says,

“The thing that I’ve seen when I look at credit card data and other things that I can get from the private sector is that while people have been spending more money at gas stations, they’ve been spending more money on everything else,” Hassett said, with his ever-present grin.
...
“[This] means that they’re still very, very optimistic about the state of the economy...

Let them eat cake.

NPR dedicated a week to stories and conversations about how communities are moving forward on climate solutions despite significant political headwinds. As the federal government halts plans to address climate change, states, cities, regions, and even neighborhoods are trying to fill the gap by cutting climate pollution and adapting to extreme weather.

In conservative Utah, some communities are ditching fossil fuel power for clean energy

Denver has a plan to heat and cool buildings without fossil fuels. It involves … sewage?

How one Oregon city has raised a billion dollars for climate change

As floods get worse, Britain tries a new solution: beavers

A guide to converting your lawn into a wildlife friendly garden

Barnett has priorities that meet the needs of Tennesseans and the United States. Burchett is just having fun.

Barnett:
A Government that Actually Represents Us
An Economy that Works for All
Healthcare Focused on People, Not Profits
Building Better Infrastructure
Invest in educaton.
Protect our environment.
Affordable housing.

Burchett:
Is a follower of Big Foot
Worries about UFOs
For term limits but he's running for a 5th term
For government transparency but crickets when DOJ removes Jan. 6, 2021, documents from the public eye.
For healthcare but wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Protecting gun owner rights but not the rights of citizens to be safe from encountering open carry gun owners.
Crickets on the economy.

Isn't it time for a change? It appears Burchett has been in DC too long.