Huzzah for the new Tory leader!
The thing that drove me crazy was seeing how the lives of young gay, sometimes autistic, children were being destroyed on the altar of trans activism … and meeting young people who had effectively been sterilized. It’s horrific,” –
Kemi Badenoch, the new British Tory leader, on child sex reassignment. Via Andrew Sullivan.
Long-term forecast: deja vu
The resentment over the expulsion of Stephen Kappes as chief of the clandestine service was ferocious. Kappes, an ex-marine and former station chief in Moscow, represented the very best of the CIA. In partnership with the British intelligence service, he had only recently played a leading role in a triumph of intelligence and diplomacy by persuading Libya to abandon its long-running program to develop weapons of mass destruction. When he questioned Goss’s judgment, he was shown the door. The new director surrounded himself with a team of political hacks he had imported from Capitol Hill.
Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes
If you think Team Trump values competence over sycophancy, you haven’t been paying attention.
Destruction — creative or not
On the other side of the Channel, the mass protests of the London taxi drivers both expressed and contributed to the Brexit mood. This was a fight for economic sovereignty by highly trained professionals against the threat posed by foreign ride-hailing firms that rely on map software, U.S. military satellites, and the subsistence drivers of the gig economy. Essentially, Uber created a system of labor arbitrage to sidestep and nullify local control.
Matthew B. Crawford, Why We Drive
(Crawford is talking about Uber/GPS displacing London Cabbies, who take years learning every street in London by heart in order to be licensed.)
Shorts and Wordplay
The inability of some critics to connect the dots doesn’t make pointillism pointless.
Georges Seurat
Notes to self: Don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from.
Steve Brady on micro.blog, though I doubt that it’s original with him.
If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (Sounds like the Lord of Spirits guiding principle.)
… the eerie, vaguely-writing-flavored products that programs like ChatGPT generate ….
Phil Christman, Does Teaching Literature and Writing Have a Future?
Trump is history in a golfcart
Ross Douthat (who’s pretty sure he stole it but can’t remember from whom)
There is nothing that I may decently hope for that I cannot reach by patience as well as by anxiety.
Wendell Berry
Trump’s super power has always been to get his opponents to bust norms in the name of shutting him down.
Your life is not about you.
Bp. Robert Barron, quoted by Molly Worthen
It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada.
Trump Tells Trudeau He Won’t Annex Canada if They Admit Their Bacon Is Just Ham.
[T]he idea that Russia always wins wars of attrition may have exceeded its expiration date.
I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.
Simone Weil, from a letter to Georges Bernanos.
I don’t do any of the major social media, but I have two sub-domains of the domain you’re currently reading: (a) You can read most of my reflexive stuff, especially political here. (b) I also post some things on the only social medium I frequent, because people there are quirky, pleasant and real.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 