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Looking into the status of the Gulf of America controversy. It seems that the executive order the president signed establishes only that the executive branch of the government is required to use the term — and that’s where the matter stands. Something I didn’t know: “Mexico” is a word meaning Aztec.

On the new ballroom of the White House, Debbie Millman, NYT.

Sir Walter Scott, 1829, July 7.—I was rather apprehensive that I might have felt my unusual dissipation this morning, but not a whit; I rose as cool as a cucumber, and set about to my work till breakfast-time. I am to dine with Ballantyne to-day. To-morrow with John Murray. This sounds sadly like idleness, except what may be done either in the morning before breakfast, or in the broken portion of the day between attendance on the Court and my dinner meal,—a vile, drowsy, yawning, fagged portion of existence, which resembles one’s day, as a portion of the shirt, escaping betwixt one’s waistcoat and breeches, indicates his linen.

Hanania: it’s just the little things that remind you we’re now being ruled by savages

Relevant news: local law enforcement working with I.C.E. (NYT)

I was noticing the Times kind of blundered its initial coverage of the Quanitico speech to the generals. Trump buried his lede — that the United States had an “enemy within” that the military would need to address — a recurrent strategy of his, and the Times missed that in their initial story (while Laura Rozen was right on it in real time, and called the speech “horrifying” in her substack.)

Noting that Hegseth doesn’t apparently consider tattoos to be “superficial, individual expression” — just long hair and beards. Similarly, the drinking culture is fine for military readiness, but not fat guys.

Interesting prologue to Cervantes’ Persilis and Sigismunda (Cervantes in the first person here):

“As we travelled we spoke on the subject of my ailments, and the good student immediately pronounced my doom, saying, “This malady is the dropsy, which all the water in the ocean would not cure, even if it were not salt, you must drink by rule, sir, and eat more, and this will cure you better than any medicine.” “Many have told me so,” I answered, “but I should find it as impossible to leave off drinking as if I had been born for no other purpose. My life is well nigh ended and, by the beatings of my pulse, I think next Sunday at latest will see the close of my career, you have therefore, sir, made acquaintance with me just at the right moment, though I shall not have time to show myself grateful for the kindness you have shown to me.” […] Adieu to gaiety, adieu to wit, adieu, my pleasant friends, for I am dying, yet hoping to see you all again happy in another world.”

Fareed Zakaria: a complacency that may prove deadly.

To contrast: that where Don Quixote’s Spiritual Vision occurs in the depths of the earth in the Cave of Montesino, Sancho Panza’s Vision occurs high over the earth, as he supposes, on the enchanted wooden horse Clavileño.

“Sancho, as you would have us believe what you saw in heaven, I require you to believe me as to what I saw in the Cave of Montessinos. I say now more.” (The contrast of earth and air, master and servant, argues for the artful construction of the book, particularly Part II.)

To grow obsessive over: the color green in Don Quixote, particularly Part II.

The observation that Don Quixote, without being a manifestly pious book, has a much more pro-Christian attitude than, say, the works of Shakespeare, which feel more skeptical and secular. One can certainly see in Don Quixote, knight errant, believer in enchantments, scorned and beaten for his beliefs, Don Quixote the Christian believer in miracles.

This passage in particular brought that out for me recently (Don Quixote speaking):

“I conjure thee, phantom, or whatever thou art, tell me what thou art and what thou wouldst with me. If thou art a soul in torment, say so, and all that my powers can do I will do for thee; for I am a Catholic Christian and love to do good to all the world, and to this end I have embraced the order of knight-errantry to which I belong, the provinence of which extends to doing good even to souls in purgatory.”

Tristram Shandy, too, though bawdy, seems also a lot more Christian in its underlying assumptions than does Shakespeare.

Hanania: if you’re reading this, there’s a better than average chance you’re at least a little bit autistic.

Coulisse: A piece of timber having a groove in which something glides.

Yglesias: All political calculations aside, it genuinely does not make sense to ask Democrats to vote for an appropriations deal that the White House has pre-announced it intends to violate.

Frederick Douglass: There can be no right of speech where any man, however lifted up, or however humble, however young, or however old, is overawed by force, and compelled to suppress his honest sentiments.

Yglesias: Everyone, every day, has the opportunity to nudge the world in either a saner or less sane direction.

Dibble: To use a dibble; to make holes in the soil for planting.

Wallace Stevens poem “The Comedian as the letter C”:

On porpoises, instead of apricots,
And on silentious porpoises, whose snouts
Dibbled in waves that were mustachios,
Inscrutable hair in an inscrutable world.

Making marmelade out of marmals today… marmelade comes from a word meaning “quince,” from which the preserve was originally made.

Yes: “Professors tweeting about their research > professors skeeting replacement level progressive politics takes.”

“What do you think of this, Sancho?” said Don Quixote. “Are there any enchantments that can prevail against true valor? The enchanters may be able to rob me of good fortune, but not of fortitude and courage.” (Don Quixote, Part II, Chapter 17. Revised Ormsby translation.)

« Quand j’aurai inspiré le dégoût et l’horreur universels, j’aurai conquis la solitude. »

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When I have inspired universal disgust and horror, I will have conquered solitude.