Be patient with your grief.
Category Archives: Thought for the Day
Thought for the Day – January 14, 2025
We have been so desensitized by a hundred and fifty years of ceaselessly expanding technical prowess that we think nothing less complex and showy than a computer or a jet bomber deserves to be called “technology” at all. As if linen were the same thing as flax — as if paper, ink, wheels, knives, clocks, chairs, aspirin pills, were natural objects, born with us like our teeth and fingers — as if steel saucepans with copper bottoms and fleece vests spun from recycled glass grew on trees, and we just picked them when they were ripe…
One way to illustrate that most technologies are, in fact, pretty “hi,” is to ask yourself of any manmade object, Do I know how to make one?
Los Angeles
It’s been almost 30 years since I spent time in Los Angeles. I contemplated a move. It would’ve been a different life. Seeing places I remember burned to the ground is surreal and too on the nose.
Thought for the Day – January 10, 2025
2025 Word of the Year will “quisling”. Language Innovation of the Year will be its adoption as an adjective. Use it in a sentence:
“Wow, why is Fetterman turning into a quisling shitstain?”
Thought for the Day – January 8, 2025
Overheard:
We’re not all in the same boat. But we’re in the same storm. And all boats sink.
We survive the storm together or not at all.
Thought for the Day – November 19, 2024
If [Rep. Nancy] Mace finds it difficult to use the toilet without thinking sexual thoughts or inspecting the genitals of the others in the bathroom she would be well advised to shut the stall door and keep her hatred and darkness to herself.
-Rep. Sean Casten
As some of you know, I have a trans son. I think it’s fine to thoughtfully debate whether trans girls can be in girls sports. Not debatable: Transgenderism is real & stirring up hatred against a minority community for political gain is despicable. That’s what this is. Period.
Thought for the Day – November 15, 2024
I get the desire to believe we can ideology our way past an electorate that wants to think it can eat 10 cheeseburgers a day and lose weight meeting a candidate shameless enough to tell them they can and a news ecosystem too scared to correct him. But we can’t.
-Andre Green
Thoughts for the Day – November 11, 2024
I haven’t posted much in recent years. There are two reasons: 1) Better things to do/things I enjoy more and 2) I’ve been a bit more at-ease with the world – not so much with the Big Picture but with it on a day-to-day basis. So much for #2.
“Observe, orient, decide, act.”
The nominal goals of the incoming administration include:
- Economic boom,
- Mass deportation,
- Relegation of half the population to second-class citizen status, and
- Non-violent coexistence with other nations
It doesn’t seem plausible that all of those things can exist simultaneously. #1 is conditional on #4. #2 and #3 will alienate international allies and result in a loss of goodwill that will #4 much more challenging. On the domestic side, imagine that #s 2 and 3 and the violence necessary to implement them will alienate many people who maintain our security. That feels unlikely to play out well in the long run – and perhaps not even in the short run. Our adversaries are opportunistic. They will try to take advantage of internal strife. I hope he goes for #1 and #4. He’ll trash our country just like he has every other one of his ventures, but going for #1 and #4 would leave us in the least worst position when (if?) people get serious about climbing out of the crater. (Prediction: He’ll go for 1-3 and think he can coerce 4. It won’t work and we’ll end up with 2 & 3.)
That’s hope and speculation more than observation but it’s part of how I’m trying to orient myself.
Veteran’s Day
Reading Material – November 6, 2024
Nicholas Grossman, America Chose This:
I was wrong about the election, and wrong about America… I do not regret being optimistic, writing an article that made readers feel hopeful heading into Election Day, even though that hope quickly curdled. This was going to feel terrible regardless.
I was wrong on the intangibles — the “I believe in America” stuff — and right on the rest. This election really was a national referendum on Constitutional democracy, the U.S.-led international order, and the importance of acknowledging factual reality. It’s just that the American people voted against.
America chose this, and there’s nothing ambiguous about it. It isn’t like 2016, when Trump was an outsider businessman, or 2020 when he was the sitting president. This time it’s after a coup attempt, criminal prosecutions, prominent officials from his first administration warning he’s a fascist, and a presidential campaign that lived down to that label.
Ken White, And Yet It Moves: Continue reading