I was out of commission most of yesterday with a Church Fall Festival.
I am very glad there are people who can organize things like that. I’m not “that guy.”
Dig in obituaries long enough and you may hit pay-dirt. Ashleigh Brilliant, Prolific ‘Pot-Shots’ Phrasemaker, Dies at 91. (Gift link)
Reading Glen Scrivener, The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality. 📚I just didn’t want to start anything heavy.
I should have kept up better on my iPhone capabilities. Retiring my Apple Watch force a second look and I was delighted to discover that I can set “Do Not Disturb” automatically when I’m at Church or my two commonest concert venues. (Settings –> Focus –> Do Not Disturb)
At my advanced age, I’ve ceased trying to understand how everything works on the internet. But Peggy Noonan’s column in the Wall Street Journal gave me an “Aha!” moment: MB is sane and decent and pleasant because there are no algorithms feeding our biases.
Thanks, @manton, for your wise choice.
Can your news source slip it in and twist it?
After three close second-place finishes, Chunk—a 1,200-pound brown bear with a broken jaw—has won this year’s Fat Bear Week contest. The Alaska resident is now considered a front-runner to primary Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
I will be reading Caleb Nelson’s Originalist Critique of Unitary Executive Theory - Reason.com very carefully.
After almost 3.5 years, my Apple Watch battery is unable to keep the watch running all day. It might still be useful for monitoring exercise, but I went back to my Citizen Eco-Drive.
Huzzah! No more distracting haptics every time I start something requiring concentration.
I never imagined that I would recommend that someone listen to an accordion player. But the YouTube channel Sergei Teleshev Accordion is astonishing. I’ve never (that I can recall) seen accordions like that or heard them making serious, even thrilling, music. (The daughter is 16, by the way.)
I’m pleased to report that the [Trump-Hegseth-Generals] assembly was somewhat more cringy than it was menacing, a case of two men who radiate neurosis about their own toughness lecturing a roomful of actual tough guys about how to be tough.
Nick Catoggio, Patton for Dummies
A blogger-debunker I’ve been reading is starting in on debunking a narrative of Charlie Kirk’s murder, relying on ballistics analysis.
I barely had a glimmer who Kirk was until September 10. I’m not going down this rabbit-hole now. No way. Nuh-huh. Nope.
I’m going out on a limb here with an actual prediction: What with POTUS sending troops to occupy Portland and Oregon resisting, it’s just a matter of time before POTUS maliciously mangles the name of Oregon’s Governor.
(I don’t claim a prophet’s mantle.)
I love Paris. I increasingly love history. David McCullough’s The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris really hit the spot a few years ago.
There is no point in converting people to Christ if they do not convert their vision of the world and of life, since Christ then becomes merely a symbol for all that we love and want already – without Him. This kind of Christianity is more terrifying than agnosticism or hedonism.
There seems to be a worthwhile idea rattling around my head, but I couldn’t get Drafts open fast enough to write it down. Frustrating.
Gallows humor:
“Look, Tom Homan has not had a trial and has never been proven guilty. So let’s all take a step back and do what he would do — send him to a secret prison in El Salvador until we can figure this out.”
Bryan Tucker on Homan allegedly taking a $50,000 cash bribe.
Finished Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown.
Reading Kingsnorth, Against the Machine. @JohnBrady made it sound like more than a collection of his blogposts (including Substack), so very many of which I’ve already read. 📚
Affirmed to see Kingsnorth quoting R.S. Thomas and Robinson Jeffers.
My most-used music streaming service, hands down, is Idagio. If you like classical music, you should give it a look - because classical (broadly construed) is all it does.
Listening to four thoughtful Christian guys, ages roughly 40-50, talking about Charlie Kirk. None of them knew much about him before two weeks ago. He was really a niche performer, but huge in that niche.