.i“ * ^ / . . . . . ` `~

I’ve almost edited “Haiku” out of existence, a large opening chunk now out — but I think it does yet still somewhat exist.

So much appreciate these people who can react intelligently in real time to events as they happen; best example today that I’ve come across is Hanania.

Faulkner, Pylon. “The hostler slid, lean and fast, past the golfbag and the gears and under the wheel. Hagood entered stiffly, like an old man, letting himself down into the low seat, whereupon without sound or warning the golfbag struck him across the head and shoulder with an apparently calculated and lurking viciousness, emitting a series of dry clicks as though produced by the jaws of a beast domesticated though not tamed, half in fun and half in deadly seriousness, like a pet shark. Hagood flung the bag back and then caught it just before it clashed at him again. ‘Why in hell didn’t you put it into the rumble?’ he said.”

[Really cool thing about this passage may be how he “flung the bag back and then caught it just before it clashed at him again,” which is how it happens: when something suddenly falls on you your reaction is to do what will keep it from falling rather than to do what is actually needed to stabilize it, so it is very likely to fall back on you again.]

Seneca : “This is the foremost sign of a foolish mind: it tries to take this shape and that and is never equal to itself – a thing which I think is the most shameful quality. Trust me, it is a prize role, to play the part of a single person. But there’s no one who can be only one person except the wise one. The rest of us frequently change our shapes.”

Klein: Political violence is contagious. It is spreading. It is not confined to one side or belief system. It should terrify us all.

A few things had been annoying me about Edith Grossman’s Don Quixote translation — unnecessary footnotes, and her translations of Sancho’s malapropisms, which would strike me as a little cute — and after the latest instance of the latter, having recourse to my revised Ormsby in the Norton edition, I tried that out, and at once preferred the reading experience.

Perhaps the first thing that struck me as inapt about the Grossman translation was her rendering of Knight of The Mournful Face where Ormsby has Knight of The Mournful Countenance. I don’t know which is the more accurate but “countenance” seems much better to participate in the grandiloquence of knight errantry.

Here is wiki on her translation’s reception.

Great Yglesias piece: “National” conservatism is un-American

This is an important debate. Where Yglesias and Ezra agree is that something needs to be different this time around about how and whether Democrats cooperate with Republicans to keep the government funded, though Klein seems to lean toward, and Yglesias against, threatening to let the government to shut down.

(Ad endum: Yglesias clarifies in a later tweet that whether or not to let the government shut down is, as it were, the more fun question for Democrats; while the more difficult question, more meaningful question for Democrats is, how do they win the senate?)

David French: What we are left with is a military strike conducted against suspects without due process, in the absence of any need for immediate self-defense (the boat was not firing on American forces), without any congressional authorization and without any basis in international law.

Ezra Klein: “This is not just how authoritarianism happens. This is authoritarianism happening […] it’s been about six months since Schumer decided that it wasn’t the time for a fight, that neither he nor the country was ready. Democratic leaders have had six months to come up with a plan. If there’s a better plan than a shutdown, great. But if the plan is still nothing, then Democrats need new leaders.”

Not an economist by any means but it looks like both the supply and the demand for labor are shrinking. We’re losing workers (deportation, aging population) *and* losing jobs (tariffs, gov’t positions, possibly also a deportation effect.)

On top of this, the deficit is exploding (BBB) while borrowing costs are rising, and so will inflation, too, probably rise (tariffs, energy policy). Fun times.

|…May…..|
______________________________ ___ _ ___
|…bloated puffy face …………..Not like an upstart…..|
|…I can’t remember …………little did he ever dare……|
|…but they’ll help ………………….and yet a Hotspur…..|

|………….cold water all around the sunny rock………..|
|………….which you reach with a puffy face………………|
|………….behind the bridge………………………………………..|

|…cold water al ……………….Not like an upstart………..|
|…ll around the ………………little did he ever dare……..|
|…e sunny rock ………………and yet a Hotspur………….|
|…e sunny rock ………………….
|…you reach with ……………bloated puffy face………….|
|…a puffy face be ……………I can’t remember……………|
|…hind the bridge …………….but they’ll help…………….|
___ _ _ _________ ____________ _________

Noting that I’ve completed another revision of Chance Sweepings, which was my first attempt (2020?) at compiling my coffee shop notes. I have shaved off around a tenth.

Also in this series that’s relatively polished: Community Spread.

“I keep thinking how my life would have been happier had I finished second,” he said. [nyt]

Plato is a fundamentally generous writer, and he offers his work as the beginning of something for you, rather than your end …

Ezra Klein: “I mean, there’s a famous Federalist Paper that says: If men were angels, we wouldn’t need all this government. And I read the Supreme Court as saying repeatedly: Let’s first assume Donald Trump is an angel, and then let’s work from there.”

Proust calls courage a sort of defense of one’s inner self, which I found inspiring; I understood courage as finding and retaining one’s identity.

I thought Socrates was right: courage was a kind of knowledge about what was truly fearsome and what wasn’t. (Being in the wrong, not being good, was something truly to be afraid of, while pain and death weren’t actually fearsome relatively, not if one had true knowledge.)

But it’s painful to be a regression.

Then I wasn’t sure that was right and thought that if only a little medication were applied to this spot or the other of the brain, I would be serviceably brave, just like a person with a broken leg, provided a staff, could serviceably walk. My fears required sedation, was all. (You required true knowledge of the name of a good doctor.)

Then I thought, maybe in the absence of real courage when it was really needed, our only recourse was aforethought (although maybe Science/medication is a kind of aggregate of forethought — science was Humanity’s Aforethought): of heading off well in advance those situations one doubted one had the courage to face in person. (This was why people exercised.)

Then I thought, there is magic in reality but it is always black magic since we don’t have proper minds. The mind, unless specially trained, makes illusions of the world, which stir us up about everything over nothing and the opposite.

Magical thinking is the failure to see past one’s own biases, narratives, scripts and hopes. There is the cause of, “how could this ever have happened to us?” That is the spell we enchanted persons weave.

Appreciate the measured Laura Rozen (tweet): “My 2 cents. When I noted at the top that Trump did not have public events on the long weekend schedule & had not been seen for a few days, I did not know what it meant, if anything. Maybe getting some sort of medical attention. Maybe something else. Maybe nothing. Sometimes one only finds out later what was going on. But for someone who likes to always be on TV etc, the absence seemed worth noting. It genuinely never occurred to me that anyone would think he was not alive. and when started to see the volume of responses to that effect, I felt like a bystander to whatevever was driving that virality. In any case, it is obvious today from photos of him going to his golf club with his grandchildren, he is still functional. Still, fair to say, there is something sort of limited about his visibility in those photos, and his grandchildren more discreet witnesses to his demeanor than his sometimes weekend golfing partners, say like Lindsey Graham. Still wonder if he’s had some sort of medical procedure or something. I don’t know.”

Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration

(Four Quartets)

Compelling Noah Smith thread. Part of the story of our drift toward autocracy is that leftists won’t brook Democrats.