.i“ * ^ / . . . . . ` `~

It’s even more clear in Nineteen Nineteen that Dos Passos is a sort of embryonic Pynchon. There are obvious similarities — working class ideology, the sex and the alcohol, the command of geography and history, of vocabulary and dialect, the internationalism — but also a more elusive similarity of tone. A sort of breeziness I want to call it. Events are constantly pushing forward and nothing can be lingered on for too long. Before you know what anything means the next things have overtaken them.

Interesting that Pynchon didn’t adopt any of DP’s experiments, the news reel or camera eye. Pynchon’s experiments are less stylistic, more imaginatively whimsical — his songs, Byron the Bulb, etc. — or structural.

Yglesias: The fact that Trump drained the Reflecting Pool, repainted it, and then bragged that he’d solved an algae problem that has plagued the National Park Service for decades only to discover that he actually didn’t solve it at all is not important. But it is a potent metaphor for much of his administration — notably the war with Iran, which played out on a parallel timeline and similarly ended with Trump discovering that he in fact could not secure a better deal than the one the Obama administration had already bequeathed to him.

But in typical Trump fashion, he didn’t just say something like, “I tried but it didn’t work and now the question is whether Congress wants to appropriate money for a very expensive rebuild of the filtration system or if everyone should just learn to live with algae.” He’s gone off on a whole insane binge of lying about the situation, arresting people for touching the water, and so forth. Meanwhile, you have center-right people complaining that the media is too obsessed with the Reflecting Pool when it doesn’t matter. To which I say: Sure. But Trump made a huge deal out of this and now wants to wriggle out of talking about it because it’s an embarrassing failure, which is not only Trump’s approach to Iran but also the whole conservative movement’s approach to Trump!

Minarchism: Belief in the desirability and practicality of minimum government.

Etymology of “hairdo” is pretty unsatisfying — from “doing” one’s hair. And yet there’s something curious about its formation: one’s hair is “done” — past perfect tense? – yet the finished product is a hair “do” — present tense.

It isn’t a hair done or done-hair or do-hair. (And “Doo-wop” is unrelated.)

Just looking at the word without knowing what it means, one might guess that it refers to what hairs do, what hairs are made to do — how hairs are made to be in a certain way. Maybe hair-be would be a more accurate term.

Imagined conversation:

— I really love your hairbe.

— Thanks, I just had it done.

Well, maybe “hairdo” makes some sense after all. I think “hair style” is still more sensible. And it’s unusual that “hairdos” are only really for ladies.

“Like a chamber perpetually locked up” — is an incurious mind, wrote Joseph Conrad.

Would Faulkner have been a Trumper?

Yglesias: “Your hot takes won’t solve the major riddles of Western philosophy.”

True. Nevertheless, my hot take on this particular topic would take this line of attack if I were to try to pursue it:

“A precondition of consciousness is being alive; A.I. is not alive; so A.I. can’t be conscious.”

I suppose that just pushes the question to, why don’t I think A.I. is alive? And yet that might be an interesting distinction to explore, between being living and being conscious. And yet — and this is Yglesias’ point — that area has already probably been vastly explored.

Scut: A short, erect tail, as of a hare, rabbit, or deer.

Diverticulum: A small out-pouching of an organ wall such as the large intestine or urinary bladder.

I don’t have extensive experience with Philogelos but it seems to me unfunny in exactly the same way newspaper cartoons are.

λιμόξηρος ἰδὼν ἄρτον ἐν ὑπερθύρῳ κείμενον εἶπε· θεέ, ἢ ἐμὲ ὔψωσον ἢ τοῦτον ταπίνωσον.

The hungry one seeing bread lying over the door said — hurry, either make me higher or make that lower.

(These are things people think, not things that are funny.)

(Philogelos)

Crossing the intersection, fourth of the five four-way stops, fifth of the eight five-way intersections. Discipline, patience, habit, fear, inhibition, inanition, rut, Francis, ghosts, Convenience, lack of a path, “hiding and creeping” (what is the relation of the 8-fold path to the fifth of the eight-way intersections?) (none) what of the four noble truths…? (none)

Fragonard, Hill top, climactic broken edge of cement, climax means ladder. STOP. This area needs a replica, either gigantic or life-sized, of the sandaled foot of Aristophanes. STOP. Climax not related to climate etymologically. (It is actually) More pressure on the knees and ankles at this point.

I, Nemo to my Nautilus, the not-me, am fully aware of my descent, yet only partially and crudely aware of what instrumental readings this descent might engender or result in (my mindbeing essentially Benjamin Partridge)

how many leaves did I pass as I thought that? How many leaves did I pass as I thought “Kirk Douglas is excellent in Lust for Life as Van Gogh and is not bad as Ned Land in 20,000 Leagues”?

20,000 Leagues, 1954.

It’s tempting to mention bread and circuses here, except there’s no bread... Michelle Goldberg

Unexpected result. Ngrams: cladistic.

ngrams: hermeneutic

Second Superman movie better than the first, 1980.

ngrams: “heuristic”

ngrams: “epistemics”

An idea about “coincidence” — that it’s meaningless, yet a good sign. The more engaged with life you are, the more you find yourself experiencing coincidence.

Tu quoque, specific kind of ad hominem argument, and useful concept. Example:

Alice: Smoking is associated with chronic health disorders. You shouldn’t smoke.
Bob: But you smoke yourself. So much for your argument!

Bob reasons that because Alice is being hypocritical, her statement about the effects of smoking must be false. But the truth of Alice’s claim has no connection to whether or not she is a hypocrite.

avoir beau French expression, to do something in vain.