Watched A Man for All Seasons 🍿, which I take as fortification every 10-15 years or so.
The main difference between Robert Bolt’s Thomas More and me is that I can’t keep my mouth shut nearly as well as he. They wouldn’t have to look hard to find my opinion expressed.
I’ve read Andrew Sullivan for years, but what he writes just doesn’t seem to fit who and where I am today. So tomorrow, the subscription ends.
There’s only 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, and too many smart people writing things to fit it all in.
Even as I use AI, I continue reading the cautions from people I respect. Brad Littlejohn, One Tool to Rule Them All, distinguishes tools from machines and brings Middle Earth into it.
The more opaque new things are, the more we resort to myths and stories to explain them, I guess.
OK by me.
As different as different can be:
I’ve come to presume illegality of almost anything Trump does, even if I’m not familiar with the area of law. My presumption has been right oftener than it has been wrong, though I have been surprised a few times at what the law actually does allow a President to do. (It allows him to do too much, but nowhere near everything, without Congress.)
57 years to the day since the first man, a Purdue Boilermaker, set foot on the moon. Soon, there will be a space mission with 5 Boilermakers.
We’ve called it “the cradle of astronauts” for years.
I sing in a chorale with a Purdue prof who’s behind the Mars Rover and jockeys it around.
Have I mentioned yet today how much I love Becket?
Probably my last World Cup comment.
A foreign color commentator was asked before the final “What are we going when this is over?” His answer: “Laundry. It’s hard being on the road for a month.”
Am I the only one wondering about how the World Cup final is going to work in an open stadium full of wildfire particulates? âš˝
“Kylian MbappĂ© broke the all-time scoring record for the tournament with his 22nd goal.”
Talk about a record that needs an asterisk next to it!
Reading Carlos M.N. Eire, Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650 đź“š
Finished reading: Galahad and the Grail by Malcolm Guite đź“šWill buy the other three volumes if Guite completes them and I’m still conscious.
It’s morning in America: Trump only stretched his pack of paranoid delusions to 25 minutes of prime time last night.
I just discovered that my 1982 Law Journal Note is freely available online. I thought of downloading it and reading it for the first time in decades, but I don’t think I could bear it. Much water under the bridge since then.
I was rooting for France, but I think Spain is going to be hard for anyone to beat. No big-name superstars, but a bunch of guys playing with intense discipline as a team. Very impressed, especially with that second goal. ⚽️
I started to write about Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell. Then I remembered how unlikely it is that they will be remembered as important by anyone other than historians in even ten years.
I suspect that AI is the real, enduring story of our era. And who is the Avatar of AI?
My wife just read me a news item about Martha Lillard, the last polio survivor still using an iron lung.
How terrifying had to be it for my parents’ generation to watch the advance of polio! I had one classmate who survived it. The Salk Vaccine is one of the great achievements in public health.
Watching England and Norway on two-hour delay (it conflicted with Vespers). I’m impressed with Norway’s lightning strikes. Glad I got to see what all the Haaland buzz is about.
With USMNT out, I’m shifting my allegiance to France (which isn’t hard for me) and I’m stoked about today’s match against Morocco.
Pulisic appeared to sustain the injury in the 52nd minute of the U.S. men’s national team’s 4-1 defeat, when he wound up to take a shot at the edge of the penalty box but instead kicked the back of Belgian midfielder Youri Tielemans’ calf.
James Horncastle, Henry Bushnell and Paul Tenorio
First, I’m going to ask “What are you guys smoking? He kicked the heel of the Belgian’s shoe. And my leg ached just watching the replay.”
Second, I’m going to see if there’s a YouTube for a very belated VAR … Well, there is and it shows that I’m right.
In need of salvation, yet not wanting to be made safe by science. The humanities are hoary. Towards the end of one’s life, towards the end of the century; worse still towards the end of the millennium, the tempter appoaches us as desperation.
R.S. Thomas, The Echoes Return Slow, in Collected Later Poems 1988-2000
