- Persons with names like Blaine, Chad, Liam, Jaydon, Barsanuphius, or Paisios can’t sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis.
Steve Robinson, The Ultimate Bluesmaxxing Guide.
Steve Robinson can generally cure my funk, but he posts rarely.
Nothing more to be said about the White House correspondents dinner? You fail to reckon with the formidable fury of Frum, who takes the commentary up to the meta level: why would the press make nice with a President who extorts their parent companies when he’s displeased with their coverage?
I’m now arrived — thanks to the gods! —
Thro’ pathways rough and muddy,
A certain sign that makin roads
Is no this people’s study:
Altho’ I’m not wi’ Scripture cram’d,
I’m sure the Bible says
That heedless sinners shall be damn’d,
Unless they mend their ways.
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The first marathon over the now-standard distance of 26 miles, 385 yards, contested at the 1908 London Olympics, was won in 2:55:19.
I generally ignore the NBA, but apparently I haven’t really lived until I’ve watched Victor Wembanyama. So here I sit, watching San Antonio and Portland (with Wembanyama currently on the bench). In 5 minutes, he has 2 points, 2 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 blocked shots.
As awkward dinners go, it is likely to give Thanksgiving a run for its money.
The Economist on Donald Trump’s plan to attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner tonight and to give the keynote address. (He has not attended since 2011 when Barack Obama pelted him with zingers.)
Reading Tolstoy, War and Peace. 📚
In my youth, long, long ago, “reading War and Peace” was a kind of proto-même.
Having recently finished Middlemarch, I’ve given up on setting a record for number of books read in 2026. Quality, not quantity.
(Tolstoy won the coin toss with My Antonia.)
I detest what the SPLC has become, but I have no confidence that Kash Patel’s FBI has built a viable case against it. Jeb Rubenfeld seems to concur. (I have no confidence in anything coming out of Trump’s DOJ or FBI. He has turned them into trash, which rhymes with “Kash,” which … oh, never mind.)
We are discovering, for example, that AI is especially adept at displacing or, from the techno-optimist’s perspective, liberating us from human labour in contexts wherein humans had already conformed, willfully or otherwise, to the pattern of a machine. Build a techno-social system which demands that humans act like machines and it turns out that machines can eventually be made to displace humans with relative ease.
I read this less than a week ago, but it haunts me and keeps popping up in my head as I read things like, say, this.
Finished Sarah Isgur, Last Branch Standing. 📚
There are many potential take-aways, but my personal favorite (based on “The Nuclear Option” chapter) is that we need to bring back the filibuster for confirmation of judicial nominees; i.e., force Presidents to nominate from closer to the center.
“The Nuclear Option”: Best chapter yet (i.e., the chapter that highlighted the most, and most important, connections I hadn’t noticed on my own) in Sarah Isgur’s Last Branch Standing.
Ya gotta give props to Elinor Wylie for coming up with “scuppernong” as a rhyme (or was that the word for which she needed, and found, the rhyme “summer long”?).
Treated the family to a Korean HotPot and Barbecue joint for Sunday dinner:
Regarding #1: Grandson’s Prom was Saturday and son let him drive the vintage Miata for the first time. That’s all grandson wanted to talk about.
I thought Russell Moore’s podcast today, Trump’s AI Jesus Might Be the Messiah We’ve Been Looking For, was worth a recommendation.
Last week I heard Iain McGilchrist describe the Reformation is “left-hemisphere inspired” and “headstrong.” That got some juices flowing.
A really dirty campaign for the Indiana legislature, pitting a traditional conservative (targeted for blocking mid-decade redistricting) against a lady supported by TPA, MAGA, X Influencers and other spawn of Satan.
I keep forgetting: I’m not in that district. I have no vote in the matter.
I went to Substack controls to cancel the Free Press, which has become very disappointing. The straw that broke the camel’s back was an article on the Catholic Case for War with Iran, which might have risen to the level of sophistry if its premises hadn’t been lies, half truths, or post-hoc speculation.
When I got to the controls, I decided that what I really needed to do was to turn off notifications for the threads that have been consistently bad. There are a few remaining that justify the subscription, like Eli Lake on history, Coleman Hughes, Ruy Teixeira, and even Martin Gurri.
Virginia’s Unconstitutional Effort to Strip Property Tax Exemptions From Pro-Confederate Groups.
I concur in this opinion.
You’re the most successfully retired lawyer I know. A lot of lawyers struggle with retirement.
I had lunch yesterday with the younger lawyer I trained in the arcana of my practice niche so I could retire without the firm losing those clients.
She made that interesting comment.
Insofar as I’ve retired more successfully than others, it may be because I always saw law as a pleasant livelihood, not as an identity.
29% of Americans think Trump is somewhat religious or very religious..
29% of Americans are not very ightbray (Pig Latin used so they won’t understand and show up at my door with torches.)
The coin drops: I shouldn’t waste time on Why People Hate Lena Dunham - Freddie deBoer because I don’t know who Lena Dunham is (other than a hate-object) and have no felt need to find out.
I regret to inform you that this administration is a bunch of barbarians engaged in systematic mass vandalism. Josef Palermo, What I Saw Inside the Kennedy Center - The Atlantic.
Build a techno-social system which demands that humans act like machines and it turns out that machines can eventually be made to displace humans with relative ease.
L.M. Sacasas, AI as Christian Heresy