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.
In the year of our Lord 2025, in the ninth month of the chaotic reign of Emperor Donald the Orange and in my own 77th year, I am tempted by (as in “tempted to buy”) Phil Christman’s Why Christians Should Be Leftists.
Soon, Charlie Kirk will fade from my focal attention, then from my attention at all. Meanwhile, some observations about him and a few other things here.
I had no idea this guy existed: Jack Daniels, Olympian and ‘World’s Best’ Running Coach, Is Dead at 92 - The New York Times. (Shared link)
Coinage of the year, maybe of the decade: "conflict entrepreneur"
On CNN, [Utah Governor Spencer] Cox labelled the War Room host [Steve Bannon] a “conflict entrepreneur” and encouraged Americans not to listen to voices that profit off of division.
“Look, there are conflict entrepreneurs out there who benefit from radicalizing us. And I’m not one of those. I don’t know that that’s particularly helpful,” he said.
Kinda like “war profiteer” only less honorable.
Finished Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness. 📚 Glad I read it for more reasons than I’ve sorted out just yet.
Context matters.
Wife from next room: Who is Charlie Kirk?
Me: (Formulating just the right withering put-down …)
Wife: He’s been shot and killed.
Me: (Mute, with thoughts I shouldn’t oughta been thinking, not even for a few seconds …)
He won’t be the last. We really are a mess.
Apple status update
- Since introducing the M-series chips, Apple had done nothing to make me want to replace my early M1 Airbook.
- Until Apple introduces a phone whose battery will support 12 hours of walking around foreign countries with GPS on, I’m content with my iPhone 15 and external portable batteries.
- iPads are fine. I wish I’d gotten more memory on the big one, and I wish the battery life were better on the little one, but I’ll manage.
- I treated myself to an Apple Watch for our Golden Anniversary. 40 months later, as the battery fades slowly in the West, I’m looking forward to not getting notifications on my wrist. I don’t expect to get another Watch.
This indifference to owning the very latest tech is a novel experience for me.
I’ve been discounting the theory that Trump is avoiding l’affaire Epstein when he wags dog after dog after dog. Today, I won’t discount it.
[Proper noun], [Pronoun] [verb] ….
Is this a new, cretinous stylesheet for local television news?
Examples:
The students, they say …
Caitlyn, she says …
I must have heard it a dozen times in ten minutes just now.
The modern West is said to be Christian, but this is untrue: the modern outlook is anti-Christian, because it is essentially anti-religious; and it is anti-religious because, still more generally, it is anti-traditional; this is its distinguishing characteristic and this is what makes it what it is.
René Guénon Guénon , The Crisis of the Modern World
The uncomfortable truth about watching (American) football. Boxing, too. MMA, too-to-the-Nth-power.
I don’t have to think through it. Somewhere along life’s way, I just ceased enjoying most “contact sports” (legitimate wrestling excepted, as it’s not especially injurious).
Damon Linker has a longish, and I think fair, critical analysis of Bari Weiss’s The Free Press, which rumor has it is being bought for a very handsome price. Bari Weiss Conquers the World.
He’s not enthusiastic at the thought of Bari, with her biases, getting a high sinecure at CBS.
I ran across this dystopian sentence in the New York Times: “Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters.”