Still reading Carlos Eire, Reformations 📚, but I’m past the midpoint.

Suffice that my sense of Western Church history is changing.

Not us, but near us: thunderstorms with winds up to 100 mph; caution not to drive North on I-65 due to driving rain, zero visibility.

My wife’s aging Church is trying to call a pastor from the Philippines. U.S. Immigration officials are demanding ever more proof that a 150-year-old church, in a substantial brick edifice for 100 years or so, is real.

Welcome to the Trumposcene. They just might succeed in killing a Church.

I sometimes think there can be no case of FOMO worse than mine, but that can’t be. I’ve put two books on my wish list so far today, but one worse-afflicted than I might have bought them both.

Nagasaki plus 81 years

“[Caveat omitted],” my friend said over breakfast after Mass.  He opened his alumni magazine to show me a short essay by the director of one of the core curriculum program at his alma mater …

The author of the piece was writing about reading and teaching Inferno, the first canticle of Dante’s Comedy …

J Budziszewski

Even I, who found Inferno a bit of a slog, know better than this.

I thought maybe I should try National Review again. I won’t renew after trying.

The signal-to-noise ratio is just too low, and if the signal’s good enough it gets discussed in other things I read.

We mostly stay home, and I’m getting tired of replacing batteries (those expensive flat things) on luggage AirTags that haven’t been out of the house in a year.

Remove, re-label as “Travel 1,” “Travel 2” etc. Replace batteries and attach to luggage only when needed.

I wish I’d thought of this first: The ‘Manosphere’ Isn’t a Movement. It’s a Multibillion-Dollar Grievance Industry (WIRED)

Happy Friday! A survey of 60 intelligence professionals from 25 countries has crowned MI6 Europe’s most powerful spy agency. We didn’t realize anyone was keeping score—and we’re not entirely sure how you’d verify it—but congratulations to everyone involved, whoever you are.

The Morning Dispatch

If Democratic Socialists keep winning Democrat primaries, the eagerly-anticipated flip of the House may not happen.

Party primaries produce crackpot candidates in the general election. Bring back the smoke-filled rooms!

Well, duh! I’m so rusty professionally that it took the Advisory Opinions podcast to remind me that Anthony Fauci was 100% justified in taking the fifth because the Biden pardon only covers federal crimes! Some 25 state attorneys general are posturing about prosecuting him, too, under state laws.

I also began to understand why the American culture wars involved so many battles over sacrilege. Is a flag just a piece of cloth, which can be burned as a form of protest? Or does each flag contain within it something nonmaterial such that when protesters burn it, they have done something bad (even if nobody were to see them do it)? When an artist submerges a crucifix in a jar of his own urine, or smears elephant dung on an image of the Virgin Mary, do these works belong in art museums? Can the artist simply tell religious Christians, “If you don’t want to see it, don’t go to the museum”? Or does the mere existence of such works make the world dirtier, more profane, and more degraded?

Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind.

The Righteous Mind has been around for a while. Do our culture wars still fit this pattern — taking offense that the other side is profaning something sacred?

What are the sacred cows of (in broad strokes) American progressives versus American conservatives these days?

Through the grapevine: A young woman of my acquaintance, mother of 5 girls and a boy, told them that she had a disease (breast cancer) and that the treatment probably would make her bald.

The boy said “Cool!”

Isn’t that the most Boy Thing ever?

In the last few days, you may have heard about Leopold Aschenbrenner—the wonder kid hedge fund manager who lost tens of billions over the course of a few days. It’s the biggest financial fiasco of the year.

If you didn’t read about it in the news, don’t worry. Hollywood will certainly make it into a movie. This 25-year-old hot shot’s financial empire was literally collapsing while guests were showing up for his blowout wedding at a fake Tuscan villa in California. The screenplay practically writes itself.

Ted Gioia covers what I hadn’t seen before. This kid was an SBF wannabe.

It’s not fine furniture, but it’s very sturdy and puts a lot of books by my chair.

I have a reminder popping up on my screen every morning at 6:30 am: Will anyone care about this in a few years?

A reminder not to dwell on ephemera, which spared me dwelling on Anthony Fauci today.

Hate to say it, but Olivia Miles of the Minnesota Lynx was fabulous yesterday against the Fever. She was more dominant in the pace and enthusiasm of the Lynx than even her solid numbers (24 pts., 4 reb., 6 asst.) show. 🏀

I don’t look to Ezra Klein for spiritual insight. He delivered anyway. Christopher Nolan Stared Into Elon Musk’s Soul.

TIL: The illegibly-small customer service phone number for a credit card thrust upon me, made further illegible by embossing the card number over it, is just one digit off from “America’s hottest chat line.”

Trying to cancel a credit card early on Sunday morning after attempted fraud is no fun.

It looked interesting, so I subscribed: For the love of the game: Orange Blossom Ordinary celebrates two years — Orange Blossom Ordinary

The problem today is we value what’s countable rather than what’s important.

(David Brooks)

Wise voices like David Brooks are being lost as the AI Gee-Whiz crowd and the AI Luddites shout at each other. When last did you hear anyone point out that AI often produces “eloquence without content,” sounding smart without saying anything substantive?

The Russell Moore Show is hit-or-miss. His interview with Brooks was a very solid hit.

Stunned that Ross Douthat is leaving the New York Times to join CBS 60 Minutes. He is a great interviewer, though I don’t know how well he does “gotcha.” I’ll miss his regular appearance in print.

It’s getting to the point that I need to have Chrome open to run things my Firefox configuration doesn’t want to run. Only on Chrome, for instance, could I actually unsubscribe from the Bose marketing emails; only on Chrome could I select buying options other than Amazon on Goodreads.

Occasionally, Ted Gioia publishes something of so little interest to me that I am forcibly reminded that he’s a polymath and I’m not. F’rinstance, The 50 Essential Western Films (Part 2) - by Ted Gioia