Joe Biden: Lucius Quinctis Cincinnatus he’s not.
Donald Trump: It wasn’t an immigrant who raped E. Jean Carroll.
Die Träume sind überhaupt nicht frei
Unbidden Bits—May 30, 2024
I’m in Arizona, in the checkout line at Walmart, clutching something I need today that was two days away by Amazon.
I look around at the patriarchal beards, the camouflage cargo pants, thinking idle thoughts about the carnival barkers on Fox News, Samuel Alito’s wife, how temporary the privilege of calling Trump a felon will probably turn out to be.
It comes to me then: A people camping out in the ruins of their own civilization. I pay for my indispensable, cross the parking lot, head back home.
I throw my car keys on the kitchen counter, hearing Hillary the imposter’s earnestness, her arrogance, back in 2016. It was way too late even then, and now….
“Going forward,” as the Wall Street pundits are so fond of saying, it’s not what we do with them that will matter. It’s what they’ll do with us.
John Gruber Gets It
For an old Mac guy, John Gruber, bless his heart, has always done his damndest to be fair in his judgments about tech. After several days of watching some of my favorite tech columnists lift their legs on iPads in general, and the new iPads in particular, reading his review of Apple’s M4 iPad Pro pretty much made me jump for joy.
I’m typing this on my new M4 iPad Pro with a nano-textured screen, and I don’t care what anybody says—the little girl in Apple’s “What’s a computer?” ad of 2017 got it, and John Gruber, prince of the grumpy old Mac diehards that he is, also gets it. He’s made my day….
Full disclosure: I’m 30 years older than John, and far grumpier, but the iPad still has the power to make me want to live another hundred years. That little girl—and John—speak to me, and for me, and I suspect I’m not alone.
Unbidden Bits—May 6, 2024
What if the panpsychists are right, and somehow even sand fleas and vegetables can feel pain? Makes the Christian doctrine of humankind’s essentially sinful nature even more soul-destroying to contemplate than it already is. Listen, I’m conscious enough of my very traditional transgressions, I don’t need to start worrying about how many carrots I’ve murdered in my eight decades of blissful predation. Either panpsychism or Catholicism, or better yet both, have to go. Meanwhile, I just don’t wanna talk about it….
Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
Apple is certainly guilty of at least some of the transgressions it’s been accused of by Margrethe Vestager, the principal finger-wagger of the European Commission. Arrogant corporate behemoths are a tax on the general welfare, right enough, but so also are vengeful bureaucrats whose principal complaint seems to be that Americans got to the future before the French and Germans had a chance to certify it.
There are lots of smart people on both sides of this unfortunate culture clash, so I suppose it’s possible that some sort of quasi-equitable justice will eventually be done, but I’m not optimistic. I mean, c’mon people, really—does anyone at this late date actually want a cell phone designed by the European Commission?
How To Make a Shithole Country
This is thanks to Paul Krugman, who keeps an eye on things—like Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers—that I just can’t bring myself to look at.
Canta y No Llores II
Accounting
In my seventies, dreams have seized me.
Uncompromising, but not unkind,
Of more significance, now it’s come to this,
Than the judgments of my peers.
I embrace this purgatory of dreaming,
Consider it generous, a blessing even,
To be granted a good look at the bill
Before it comes due
Canta y No Llores I
Senescence
When I was twenty
I figured
If I got this far
No way
Would gruel in the morning
And a beer at sundown
Suffice
There was a guy here
A couple of years ago
Musta thought he was
Henry Miller
Saucy motherfucker
But otherwise
Wise enough
I wonder what happened
To him
The Apostle’s Creed
“Will you tell me the truth?”
“Almost never. The truth is complex, far more complex than my intention. The truth that I will tell you, that I can tell you, is that between human beings intention is everything, and that my intention is to tell you only as much of the truth as I think likely to leave you undamaged.
That’s why you mustn’t trust me. Good intentions are inevitably tainted with both ignorance and condescension. Never mind what Nietzsche said, no one ever gets beyond good and evil. The nature of reality forbids it.”
Responsibility
Another half-awake visitation:
The text is brief. “Leave now. Do not pack. Kids already in transit.” As I pass reception, an upturned face. “Madam Secretary…?”
“Out. Go Now. Everyone. Move.”
Three minutes forty-two seconds later a flash in the rearview mirror, followed by a sharp jolt transmitted through the suspension. A glance upward shows a column of dark smoke already rising where we all used to be.
Once I’m back under, I send a text of my own. “The warning was timely. Your attempt was not. My representatives will be with you shortly. If you’d rather not wait up for them, I’ll understand.”
After that, a drink. Then once more unto the breach, for now, as before, what we do is who we are. No more, no less.