TIL threnody: a song or hymn of mourning composed or performed as a memorial to a dead person.
“God’s gift to warthogs” - an oft-shared allusion between me and my wife. Here’s the source, apropos of your preparation for any New Year’s Eve party you might be attending.
For all of us who rolled into the year wondering “How much more chaotic could a second Trump term be?” 2025 did not disappoint.
Michelle Cottle, The 2025 Politics Yearbook (gift link cuz I have some left this month)
Happy Anniversary:
1759
Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease at £45 per annum to the St. James’s Gate Brewery in Dublin and began brewing Guinness.
Glory days: A years-ago choral performance of Mexican baroque music came up in conversation. I found the recording and listened to it with delight at how good we were that night. Gratifyingly, the last three minutes recorded the standing ovation, which we really earned on that one. Much, much credit to our Artistic Director from those days, William Jon Gray. It was his last concert with us.
2025 appears to have been the years when deepfake videos became convincing. Ted Gioia sees all kinds of problems coming from that:
A few days ago, having taken a big gulp and reckoned with how this will reduce my book count for 2026, I started Iain McGilquist, The Matter With Things. 📚
With all this talk of books and unread books and mortality, I just spent an hour or two taking every book save one from my Amazon wishlist, migrating maybe half of them to Bookshop.org, and deleting the other half entirely.
The one I left is Angels in the Cellar, oddly absent from Bookshop.org.
Speaking of things worth reading, one of the best things on Substack is Ted Gioia’s Honest Broker. Very eclectic and surprisingly erudite, but with a frequent foray into the world of jazz.
Wow! Great distillation!
AI is an adjunct to the left hemisphere of your brain which can free up a lot of your time to go spend it on the right by loving other people. But we probably will screw it up by pretending that AI is your therapist, friend or lover, all of which are actually right-brain things. If you’re using it to help your right brain, you’re getting it wrong and your brain won’t be fooled. You will not fool yourself. Even if it passes the Turing test in your consciousness, in your subconscious you’ll become more anxious, more lonely, more afraid and more depressed.
The Nativity Fast in Orthodoxy is over, so here I sit, fasting before a Nativity-related Liturgy this morning but looking forward to City Barbecue for lunch. Baked beans with brisket and collard greens with bacon ought to be about right.
If I’ve got to choose between Brutalism and Trump Rococo, I think I’ll take Brutalism.
Finished Francis Spufford, Golden Hill: A Novel of Old New York.📚
I should read more fiction because I kind of like truly surprising endings.
Did not finish Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History. 📚
It felt as if I’d read and internalized everything he was writing. But it’s not that he was plowing old ground, I think. Virgin soil, actually, the fruits of which plowing I’ve enjoyed my whole life. He’s the original, the protos.
We take the state’s monopoly of violence for granted, but when that monopoly is challenged, people turn to gangsters to keep the peace. Eli Lake, A History of Tough Jews (podcast episode).
I really enjoyed this podcast episode. America’s 70+ year immunity to virulent antisemitism sadly is ending.
We Let AI Run Our Office Vending Machine. It Lost Hundreds of Dollars. (gift link).
Umm, I’m definitely not ready to turn over any of my life to Agentic AI.
Much of Trump II’s first year has been spent taking near-absolute control of the Executive Branch while attempting to extend the reach of that branch.
If you want dispassionate analysis of his dealings with the Executive, I highly recommend the Executive Functions Substack. Here’s the 2025 wrap.
Even the Economist has a story on the Indiana Senate’s rejection of trying to gerrymander from 7-2 to 9-0, but I heard someone mention a factor that may be underrated: Indiana’s legislature is part-time. Representatives and Senators have real jobs (and legislative pay isn’t lavish, either).
I guess I’m a pretty simple guy when it comes to the ‘net. I’m here on micro.blog. I have a WordPress blog I approach more and more laconically. I have a blot blog for venting. I never considered Substack, and as I read the travails of a guy trying to leave, I’m very glad of that.