My guilty secret: I visited my moribund X.com account Monday. I found all kinds of crap in my feed. Searched for how to filter out people I’m not following, and I now think I might be able to tolerate it.

It may be worth pondering that that despite Trump’s constant stream of lies, confabulations and bullshit, Harris may have lost from perceptions that the Democrats were dishonest (covering up Biden’s incapacity, engineering a substitute candidate undemocratically, dodging questions, etc.)

One of my least endearing traits is to hector people about something they haven’t figured out yet but that I finally figured out day-before-yesterday. I’m not going to do that yet with my latest big “Aha!” It’s duly noted in my diary.

This is hard-core counter-cultural: Who Says You Can’t Live Off the Grid in Manhattan? (unlocked)

Portal-to-portal voting, arriving right as the polls opened, took more than an hour. No apathy problems here.

With apologies to the pollsters who can’t say who’s winning (outside a margin of error), I’m hoping that whoever wins does so decisively enough that the election is over.

An interesting effort to quantify the odds that America loses its democracy. The end of US democracy: a flowchart — Crooked Timber

Looking for something else, I came across this:

‘The body is mine and the soul is mine’
says the machine. ‘I am at the dark source
where the good is indistinguishable
from evil. I fill my tanks up
and there is war. I empty them and there is not peace.
I am the sound,
not of the world breathing, but
of the catch rather in the world’s breath.’

Is there a contraceptive
for the machine, that we may enjoy
intercourse with it without being overrun
by vocabulary? We go up
into the temple of ourselves
and give thanks that we are not
as the machine is. But it waits
for us outside, knowing that when
we emerge it is into the noise
of its hand beating on the breast’s
iron as Pharisaically as ourselves.

Thomas, R.S.. Collected Later Poems 1988-2000 . Bloodaxe Books. Kindle Edition.

Bret Stephens hits back-to-back homeruns.

Finished Mark Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. 📚

Was this a difficult, not just long, book? Or have I lost more capacity for sustained reading than I care to admit?

Oh glorious day! I managed to skip over maybe 90% of the electioneering in this morning’s news surfing. (There’s a reason for the term “click-bait.” It’s hard to resist.)

“These little things remind me of you.”

I guess I can take my deceased brother off my phone’s “Favorites” list.

Reading Mark Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. Or if I already said that, then still reading it.

It overlaps a lot with Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity, which I heavily highlighted.

Alienated from both parties, but formerly Republican, I was challenged by David Brooks, Confessions of a Republican Exile.

I’m still skeptical about whether AI is worth the energy demands, but I’m pretty sure that cryptocurrency and NFTs are not.

I don’t understand it, I don’t trust it, and I’m waiting for it to collapse in a scammy heap (though I’d have to understand it to put money on that).

Bret Stephens, Harris Needs a Closing Argument. Here’s One. is very appealing.

With Harris I’m pretty sure there will be another Election in four years, not at all with Trump. But with Trump at +16 in my state, I have the luxury of voting for neither of them.

That does it! No more customer satisfaction surveys!

  1. They’re intrusive.

  2. If you’re not effusive (seriously: effusive about auto service?!) you may end up on the phone with a supervisor asking “what did we do wrong?” (I just finished that call.)

Just ignore them. That’s my motto from now on.

This one won't need The Repair Shop

The Repair Shop from Great Britain is one of my favorite TV shows, but I have often thought the stories of why this item means so much a bit over the top.

Yesterday, my living brothers and I were going through the personal effects of our deceased brother. We found an Elgin pocket watch, which my younger brother remembered was given to our father (as to each of his brothers) by his father at 18, with thanks for not having taken up smoking.

None of us really wanted a pocket watch, but I noticed a Phil Delta Phi legal honorary society “key” on the watch chain, so I took it for my son, a third-generation lawyer, who conveniently had worn a three-piece suit to his uncle’s funeral. He was a “1L” when the first-generation lawyer died.

So no, I now see that the stories aren’t over the top. (And yes, when I wound the stem a turn, the old Elgin started running.)

It’s really happening. Some sensible churches are fleeing the “Evangelical” identity because of the equivocal meaning of the term and the toxicity of one meaning.

My childhood Church is having a congregational meeting to change from “Evangelical Covenant Church” to — well, just about anything.

I love my family, but I’m an introvert and all the wonderful family time (at our home, surrounding my youngest brother’s funeral) was exhausting.

I learned surprising things about neurodivergent baby brother from the stories of people who went through his visitation line.

SpaceX wizardry

17. SpaceX pulled off a feat of technical wizardry on Sunday, not only flying a 233-foot rocket booster back to its launch site, but also catching it out of the air with two giant mechanical arms. It occurred during the fifth test flight of the Starship rocket and was a huge step forward for the ambitions of SpaceX and its founder, Elon Musk, which include one day transporting people to Mars. (Source: nytimes.com)

John Ellis

I’d kinda just like to have pure contempt for Elon Musk now that he’s allies with DJT, but I must ruefully admire this sort stunning competence.

Miles Smith, Perdition. Potent.

Now: off to the Funeral Home.

The Meaning of Existence

Everything except language
knows the meaning of existence.
Trees, planets, rivers, time
know nothing else. They express it
moment by moment as the universe.

Even this fool of a body
lives it in part,
and would have full dignity within it
but for the ignorant freedom
of my talking mind.

(Murray, Les. New Selected Poems (p. 215). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.)

My main blog is the Tipsy Teetotaler, http://intellectualoid.com.