(Looks around furtively) Convenience food recommendation: Amy’s Asian Dumplings, new to the freezer section of supermarkets in my neck of the words. Very, very tasty, but not spicy.
Downing Street resident Larry the cat, Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office since 2011, has now outlasted six prime ministers.
An obituary that surprised me and - dare I say it? - even delighted me a bit: Margaret Kerry, Body and Soul of Disney’s Tinker Bell, Dies at 97 (shared link)
I didn’t remember posting this picture of us four brothers.
The one in the chair, youngest by eleven years, was the first to die, at age 62.
I notice that the rest of us aren’t getting any younger.
Former Indiana Governor and Purdue President Mitch Daniels takes the interim reins at Purdue July 1. That puts him back in the news to a surprising degree.
I have just two beefs with him:
- Daylight savings time (Governor).
- Sale of radio station WBAA, Indiana’s oldest station (Purdue).
WNBA team names (Fever, Mystics, Aces, Lynx) are pretty lame for the most part. But the “Golden State Valkyries”? Now that is an epic name!
A retired lawyer with keen interest in constitutional law, I find nothing more disheartening about this administration than this: The Trump administration is the nation’s chief threat to the rule of law. (gift article) and has deservedly lost the “presumption of regularity.”
I’m in a minority ‘round these parts in openly admitting use and some enjoyment of AI. But Lila Shroff, America Is Headed Toward the Infinite Workweek gave me an “Oof!” moment. I recognize a lot of what she’s talking about.
(This is not just a negation of “we’ll all have leisure all the time.")
50+ years ago, we made a latch-hook rug. It is currently getting its first-ever cleaning. The dryer is shedding wool fluff like mad.
Anyone know where to put that wool fluff so the birds can use it for nesting?
I’ve been thinking more about the Pew typology we batted around on Monday. This is the result (so far and probably the end of the line): Can we, should we, “keep religion out of government”?.
It includes a bibliography I’d be prouder of if I hadn’t had AI compile it for me.
I have enjoyed and purchased his music, but knew nothing of the biolgraphy of Abdullah Ibrahim. He and Ahmad Jamal gone within a very few years of each other.
RIP
With a little help from my digital “friend,” I migrated more than 2100 old journal entries from text and markdown, as old as 1993, to DayOne. This runs contrary to my “plain text” bias, but, well, I love DayOne.
Now I’m gradually retracing my steps in the late 90s from Calvinism to Orthodoxy.
Pew has a new political taxonomy with a test to see where you fit. I guessed correctly where I would fit, but man, did I ever hate about half the questions. I’m too aware of trade-offs.
The machine appeared
In the distance, singing to itself
Of money. Its song was the web
They were caught in, men and women
Together. The villages were as flies
To be sucked empty.
God secreted
A tear. Enough, enough,
He commanded, but the machine
Looked at him and went on singing.
R.S. Thomas, Other
(Thomas also has a poem titled “The Other.” This one I found in a Tweet, concluding that The Other couldn’t be, in context, what my muse was referring to.)
Reading Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. 📚 One of those extremely influential books that many allude to (i.e., “Protestant work ethic”) but few, I think, have read.
Also finished Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Akroyd – my first Agatha Christie. #BucketList?
With all the UFO/UAP stuff flooding popular media lately, it was time to update my vaccination.
So I poked around in Fermi Paradox and the physics of interstellar transport. Added metadata and then went to file it digitally.
I had no apt folder, but settled on “Travel.”
Power came back after 20 1/2 hours. I should have bought enough generator to power the air conditioner.
Internet was down over much of the city as well. It seems that Metronet has a virtual monopoly on Internet in my fair city. They got that back up before we got power.
A reminder of fragility.
We have been without power for almost 16 hours now (we have a household generator that powers the basic necessities) and also without Internet. (That brief storm did a heck of a lot of damage.) So I will be watching things here even less than usual.
The Department of Defense de-Christianizing the LDS Church was clumsy, but they were working in an area where it’s hard to be sufficiently agile. The Legal Spirits podcast explains (and the explanation is mercifully short).
Granted, I’m a fan of Apple, but I draw the line at sitting through the WWDC. A I need to know I’ll learn from news reports and changes to the product lineup at their website.
Xi Jinping arrived in North Korea on Monday for a state visit. The Chinese president’s first overseas trip this year will showcase China as a global power capable of friendly relations even with troublemakers.
Economist World in Brief.
Ummmm, like China and North Korea share a border, right?
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, formally known as the Secretary of Defense, warned on June 6 that Europe faced what he called an invasion of dangerous ideologies arriving by sea, linking immigration to the legacy of the D-Day landings in remarks in Normandy.
Ummmm. Like, Normandy is in Europe, right?
Indiana and Tennessee Declare June as Nuclear Family Month.
Not Invented Here: The late Patriarch Ilya of Georgia declared a Day of Family Purity and Respect for Parents, which ended up, and may have begun, opposite an International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia.
If your right-hemisphere doesn’t recoil instinctively from the Arc de Trump, I’m not sure these left-hemisphere arguments will sway you.