It’s CaturSaturday, August 23, 2025, and shabbos for Jewish cats, who must avoid all transportation. It’s also National Cuban Sandwich Day, a sammie that is described this way by Wikipedia:
A Cuban sandwich (Spanish: Sándwich cubano) is a variation of a ham and cheese sandwich that likely originated before the turn of the 20th century in cafes catering to Cuban workers in Tampa or Key West, two early Cuban immigrant communities in Florida centered on the cigar industry. Later on, Cuban exiles and expatriates brought it to Miami, where it is also very popular. The sandwich is made with ham, mojo, roasted pork, Swiss cheese, pickles, mustard, and sometimes salami on Cuban bread. Salami is included in Tampa, but is not usually included in South Florida
Here’s one I photographed (and ate) in Brooklyn on June 23 while attending the Heterodox Academy meetings. On the side: banana chips and, my favorite, fried ripe plantains:
It’s also National Picnic Day, Talk Like Shakespeare Day, National Cherry Cheesecake Day (the only acceptable substitute for plain), National English Muffin Day (these are not “crumpts”), German Beer Day, and, forsooth, National Laboratory Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 23 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The Menendez brothers, convicted in two trials (1994-1996) of killing their parents with a shotgun (but using as a reason that they suffered physical and sexual abuse from their father), have now both been denied parole. Lyle and Erik, originally sentenced to life without parole, were resentenced to 50 years to life, and both came up from Parole, Erik on Thursday and Lyle on Friday. Both were denied parole, but have a chance if the governor pardons them.
Lyle Menendez was denied parole on Friday, keeping him behind bars with his younger brother Erik Menendez, whose parole was denied on Thursday.
As Lyle Menendez, 57, attended the hearing remotely from the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, parole commissioner Julie Garland commended him for his behavior in prison, including his lack of violence, his work on programs and his positive relationships with other inmates and staff. She also noted his strong support network and solid plans for a post-release life.
But she said the panel found “there are still signs” that he poses a risk to the public.
“You have been a model inmate in many ways who has demonstrated the potential for change,” Garland told him at his first-ever parole hearing. “But despite all those outward positives, we see … you still struggle with anti-social personality traits like deception, minimization and rule-breaking that lie beneath that positive surface.”
Lyle Menendez’s illegal possession of cellphones in prison was another point made by the commissioners.
Garland said “incarcerated people who break rules” are more likely to break rules in society.
“We do understand that you had very little hope of being released for years,” Garland said, referring to his previous sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
“Citizens are expected to follow the rules whether or not there is some incentive to do so,” she added.
Garland said the board did give “great weight” to the fact that Lyle Menendez was under the age of 26 at the time of the murders and was very susceptible to the “negative and dysfunctional” environment in his home.
Lyle Menendez is next eligible for parole in three years. But the board said he will be considered for an administrative review within one year and could be moved up to a hearing in as soon as 18 months.
. . . . This decision comes one day after Lyle Menendez’s brother, 54-year-old Erik Menendez, was denied parole. Erik Menendez’s panel of commissioners — who were different from those reviewing Lyle Menendez’s case — based their decision on multiple factors, including Erik Menendez’s illegal use of cellphones in prison, burglaries he participated in before the murders and the brutal killing of his mother, Kitty Menendez.
The brutality of the murder and the lack of evidence that the brothers really were abused makes me less than sympathetic. I would say they should have had their sentence kept as “life without parole,” though they were fairly young when they committed the murder. It was, however, strongly premeditated and brutal, and they lied about it, even trying to enlist others to parrot their lies. If Gavin Newsom pardons them, I will be upset, as he’d be doing so on political grounds (he wants to be the next President).
*Trump is now going after the Smithsonian Institution, trying to “de-wokify” it by eliminating anything bad about American history.
Representatives for each of the museums named in the article did not respond or directed a request for comment to the central Smithsonian administration, whose spokesperson declined to comment.
“As President Trump promised, the Trump Administration is committed to rooting out Woke and divisive ideology in our government and institutions,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in an email. “Taxpayer money should not be used for things that pit Americans against one another. Our Smithsonian should exhibit history in an accurate, honest, and factual way.”
Among the targets of the White House’s list were two museums that have not yet broken ground on buildings — the National Museum of the American Latino and American Women’s History Museum — and works by individual artists.
The Hill describes some of the doomed exhibits:
The White House on Thursday unveiled a list of 20 Smithsonian exhibits the Trump administration alleges are being used to frame historical events through “ideological” narratives instead of factual evidence.
Items categorized as unacceptable include an exhibit at the National Museum of the American Latino that portrays the U.S. as stolen land and characterizes U.S. history as rooted in “colonization.”
The administration also slammed the National Museum of American History for its depiction of Benjamin Franklin, a founding father, as a slave owner and took issue with the stance that his “scientific accomplishments were enabled by the social and economic system he worked within.”
Be sure to look at the link listing the exhibits and see if you think they should go.
*In yesterday’s NYT, David Brooks gives some eye-opening data on how college students hide their political views. We all know they do, but they hide progressive ones! (h/t Callum)
Most of us, when you put us in an environment with a stifling political orthodoxy, just learn to cope. Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman are psychology researchers at Northwestern University. They conducted 1,452 confidential interviews with undergrads at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan.
They found that an astounding 88 percent of the students said they pretended to be more progressive than they are in order to succeed academically or socially. More than 80 percent of the students said they submitted class work that misrepresented their real views in order to conform to the progressive views of the professor. Many censored their own views on cultural issues — on gender and family issues, for example.
Northwestern and Michigan are not exactly hot houses of wokeness, but these interviews suggest that many, if not most, students feel compelled to publicly lie in order to conform to progressive orthodoxy, even while privately questioning it.
Brooks, who calls himself a conservative, says that there are two other reactions to fulminating progressivism. One is the Chris Rufo strategy of “destroying the status quo.” Here’s the other:
But there’s another, even more radical reaction to progressive cultural dominance: nihilism. You start with the premise that progressive ideas are false and then conclude that all ideas are false. In the dialogue, [Curtis] Yarvin played the role of nihilist. He ridiculed Rufo for accomplishing very little and for aiming at very little with his efforts to purge this university president or that one.
“You are just pruning the forest,” Yarvin said dismissively. He countered that everything must be destroyed: In general, Yarvin is a monarchist, but in this dialogue he played a pure nihilist. One version of nihilism holds that the structures of civilization must be destroyed, even if we don’t have anything to replace them with. He argued that all of America has been a sham, that democracy and everything that has come with it is based on lies.
. . . Faith in God has been on the decline for decades; so has social trust, faith in one another; so has faith in a dependable career path. A recent Gallup poll showed that faith in major American institutions is now near its lowest point in the 46 years Gallup has been measuring these things. But the core of nihilism is even more acidic; it is the loss of faith in the values your culture tells you to believe in.
Agreed; nihilism is no way to run a railroad—or a country. Here’s what Yarvin believes according to Wikipedia:
In his blog Unqualified Reservations, which he wrote from 2007 to 2014, and in his later newsletter Gray Mirror, which he started in 2020, he argues that American democracy is a failed experiment that should be replaced by an accountable monarchy, similar to the governance structure of corporations.
What does he mean by “an accountable monarchy”? Like the one in the UK? How is it accountable? And this is America: we don’t want no stinking king! And how would the monarchy be passed down: through heredity? That’s dumb, too. But it is interesting that so many youngsters won’t publicly oppose progressivism. That’s another statistic for the Democrats to take in.
*As always, I’ll steal a few items from the weekly news-and-snark column in the Free Press, named this week, “TGIF: Trump’s plan to conquer Heaven.” Sadly, Nellie Bowles is gone AGAIN, and her subsitute is Will Rahn, who is not nearly as good. Oh well, let’s proceed. . . .
→ On a lighter note: We’ll end on a note that’s both Nordic and wholesome. Sweden is moving the old town center of an Arctic city called Kiruna because they need to expand a massive iron ore mine underneath it. And on Tuesday they began moving a 660-ton church three miles away to a new, safer location.
It’s a huge media event dubbed Den stora kyrkflytten or—less cute in translation—“the big church move.” They brought out a Eurovision winner named Carola to stage a concert celebrating the whole affair. And some ten thousand people, which is probably a third of their population, were expected to turn out to watch the church slowly roll to its new home. Even the king showed up. Isn’t it adorable that they still have a king for some reason?
There’s something very Midwestern about the whole thing, and I mean this in the best sense: It’s both a grand and boring event at the same time. Like, there’s this giant church. It’s moving extremely slowly. And they’ve made it such a big deal that I’m a little jealous. If St. Patrick’s Cathedral were to be moved across town, I’m not sure we New Yorkers—or anyone else for that matter—would be all that jazzed. We’d mostly just complain about the effect on our commutes. We’d put our headphones in as the parade rolled by.
Here’s the church being moved:
→ We’ll sort of miss you, MSNBC: Everyone’s already told a million jokes about this one, but MSNBC—an institution liberals authentically love—plans to change its name to the absurdly idiotic “MS NOW.” That stands for My Source News Opinion World, obviously, and it may have broken the record for the worst name for a media organization ever (previously held by Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Quibi).
The travesty here is that some consultant made a bundle off this rebranding. Then a bunch of very smart—or at least very credentialed—people signed off on it. And now the poor journalists who work there have to pretend that this new name, this 30 Rock joke brought to life, is good and cool.
Listen, naming a news organization is hard, but it isn’t impossible. A new liberal site just launched called The Argument, which is both a pretty good name and (I assume) a nod to Fugazi’s masterful final album from 2001. Millennial nostalgia is everywhere for those with eyes to see. . . .
→ I guess they’re going with Gavin: California governor Gavin Newsom is an early leader in the polls for the Democratic nomination in 2028, despite his considerable baggage, such as the fact that he “runs” California. But he’s got a bit going right now where he mockingly imitates Trump’s social media presence and, as an erstwhile Democratic consultant told me recently, “At least he’s trying something.”
Depending on who you’re talking to, Newsom’s social media bit is irritating, offensive, or pretty darn smart. Here’s a sample, in which Newsom brags about his aggressive gerrymandering scheme in California designed to flip a few of its dwindling number of Republican U.S. House seats: “MANY ARE NOW CALLING ME GAVIN CHRISTOPHER ‘COLUMBUS’ NEWSOM (BECAUSE OF THE MAPS!). THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER. —GCN.”
One thing we can all admit is that he’s shown a real commitment to the bit—he’s kept at this for weeks now. And that is, in some respects, the secret to a successful bit: It starts off funny, then becomes annoying, yet becomes funny again because of persistence. Think of that Simpsons episode where Sideshow Bob keeps stepping on rakes. This is the same underlying logic behind Newsom’s schtick, and heck, it might work.
Here’s how I see it. A Newsom vs. Vance race would be, in some ways, a rehash of the iconic 1960 election when JFK narrowly beat Richard Nixon.
Well, I would hope that Gavin could beat Vance, who seems to have disappeared, but I’m not wild about Newsom, either. And then there’s Pritzker, also a bit too woke for me. Truth be told, there’s no Democrat that excites me now, but I will dutifully vote for one in the next election, simply because every possible Republican candidate would be worse.
At any rate, don’t blame me for the fact that this news is pretty boring, and not presented in a humorous way. Nellie, come back!
*Ignore the next bit if you don’t like baseball (I do though I don’t watch it much). We have a new phenom pitcher: Paul Skenes of the Pittsburgh Pirates. And I’m taking a bit from, of all places, the WSJ, which has an article called “Paul Skenes is pitching like no one we’ve ever seen.” An extract:
Paul Skenes entered professional baseball with as much hype as any player in history.
Talent evaluators called him the most talented pitching prospect they had ever seen. Fans marveled at his triple-digit fastball, his pinpoint command and his mysterious “splinker” pitch that seemed to defy the laws of physics.
Now on Sunday, barely two years after the Pittsburgh Pirates chose him with the first overall pick in the 2024 draft, Skenes will make his 50th major-league start. And it’s fair to say he hasn’t merely lived up to those massive expectations—he has exceeded them in just about every conceivable way.
In fact, Skenes has been so spectacular that there’s now a reasonable case to be made that the 23-year-old is having the best start to a major-league career of any pitcher in more than a century.
Since joining the Pirates last May, Skenes has been practically untouchable. He leads MLB over that span with a 2.07 ERA, having allowed 66 earned runs in 287 innings. He ranks second in opponent batting average (.198) behind Cincinnati’s Hunter Greene and second in opponent on-base-plus-slugging percentage (.558) behind Detroit’s Tarik Skubal.
Those numbers would be wildly impressive for anyone. For someone still so early in their career, they’re virtually unprecedented.
It’s only 26 months ago that Skenes was still a college student, powering LSU to a College World Series championship. Not long before that, his ambitions were trained a little higher than a career in MLB. Skenes was at the Air Force Academy juggling baseball with his dream of becoming a fighter pilot flying F-16s.
Now he’s the best pitcher in recent history.
Since the start of the live-ball era in 1920, when baseball truly began to resemble the modern game, only one other pitcher went this long into his career with an ERA as low as Skenes’s. That was Vida Blue, who posted a 2.01 ERA over his first 50 starts with the Oakland Athletics from 1969 to 1972.
. . . .the object for a pitcher is to prevent runs, and in terms of sheer dominance, it’s hard to argue with what Skenes has done. Again dating back to the start of the live-ball era—105 years ago—only four pitchers have put together consecutive seasons with ERAs under 2.00. They are Hal Newhouse, Sandy Koufax, Greg Maddux and Clayton Kershaw. As soon as Kershaw is eligible, all four will be in the Hall of Fame.
Skenes, whose ERA currently sits at 2.16, has a chance to join that club—in his first two seasons in the major leagues. (Last month, Skenes became the first pitcher ever to begin his career by starting back-to-back All-Star Games.)
There is one big caveat to all this, of course, and it can’t be ignored. Skenes, through no fault of his own, plays for the last-place Pirates, the perennial sad-sacks of baseball who happen to have the sport’s most feeble offense. This means that despite his consistent brilliance on the mound, he has done a shockingly little amount of winning.
Sad, and you can bet that if he keeps up his pitching, he’ll be out of the Pirates as soon as he become a free agent. You’ll want to see him on the mound, of course, so here’s a video:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej is finding more peace outdoors:
Hili: More and more you’re leaving the house for the garden.
Andrzej: Yes, for here life goes forward, and in the house it has stopped altogether.
In Polish:
Hili: Coraz częściej uciekasz z domu do ogrodu.
Ja: Tak, tu życie idzie dalej, a w domu zatrzymało się w miejscu.
*******************
From The 2025 Darwin Awards!!!/Epic Fails:
From Cat Memes:
From CinEmma:
Masih is not tweeting, which makes me sad; I suspect she’s too devoted to her podcast. But we have J. K. Rowling on deck, and here she resp0nds to a tweet by India Willoughby, identified by Wikipedia as:
India Scarlett Willoughby (born 2 September 1965) is an English newsreader, broadcaster, journalist and reality television personality. She is Britain’s first transgender national television newsreader and was the first transgender co-host of all-women talk show, Loose Women.
Apparently Willoughby is mocking JKR by saying that a substantial proportion of men (or women) would rather date her than Rowling:
I’d rather date me, but if I’m not available I’ll take any living entity before Willoughby. This includes molluscs, ringworms and yeast. pic.twitter.com/eWxE01bBnD
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 22, 2025
From Luana. Whoever i/o is, I generally agree with him/her/hir:
Here are more terms I’d love to never see again: Lived experience… Black Bodies… justice system involved… settler colonialism… cisheteropatriarchy… ways of knowing… erasure… queerness… front hole… intersectional… positionality… marginalized… decolonize…… https://t.co/kZP9sLOXHM
— i/o (@avidseries) August 22, 2025
From Simon, who says, “There are lots of amusing responses to this. Here is one” (go to Rupar’s post to see more):
the degree of difficulty for jeff epstein's best friend will be formidable
From Malcolm, a hilarious comedy bit
Hilarious 😂 pic.twitter.com/OivzO0ga1L
— Vince Langman (@LangmanVince) August 9, 2025
One from my feed: interspecies love
Rescued lion cub and his caretaker at a wildlife sanctuary – if this isn’t love, I don’t know what is pic.twitter.com/TvLXuk0EBh
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) August 21, 2025
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Yugoslavian Jewish girl was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was about three years old. Had she lived, she'd be 84 today.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-08-23T10:49:54.777Z
Two from Dr. Cobb, who’s on hols. This first one is stunning:
Researchers have filmed thousands of climbing catfish scaling waterfalls, providing a rare insight into the daring migration of an enigmatic fish. Learn more: https://scim.ag/4lDlFux
— Science Magazine (@science.org) 2025-08-22T13:48:53.024905599Z
. . . and salmon spawning in Alaska. The bears are waiting!
Salmon!#alaska
— Rin (@soarandexplore.bsky.social) 2025-08-21T22:09:51.470Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
There is no such thing as a “self-made” man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts. -George Matthew Adams, newspaper columnist (23 Aug 1878-1962)
The power of Gnostic theosophy comes through in this intoxicating New Age religious Deepity.
George Bernard Shaw … apparently
Your quote is the basis of the argument against causa sui and not a deepity as such.
“well, you started out with nothing and you’re proud that you’re a self-made man…”
And let us not forget the skill and luck of our particular c 20,000 generations of ancestors.¹
. . . . .
¹ Seriously.
I do like the expression “newsreader”, apparently a superset of which the expression, “weatherreader” is an element. I started using weatherreader as a pejorative description of local tv weather forecasters soon after the station went to numb nuts ai software.
“Newsreader” is the title traditionally given to presenters of radio and television news programmes here in Britain. There is, and has never been, any pejorative connotation. Many newsreaders, on both the BBC and ITV, were held in high regard by the public, and enjoyed the public trust, much like Walter Cronkite in the U.S.
I take your point about weather presenters, though. In the U.K., many are still professional meteorologists, but some are just stuffed suits reading a teleprompter in front of a green screen with clever computer graphics.
Willoughby seems to be seriously mentally ill. He continually baits and insults JKR in an attempt for attention. She sails serenely over his insults and threats and always gets the better of him.
In the poll you mention where Willoughby asked people whether they would rather date him or JKR, he lost dismally. IIRC he got around 20%. Of course, he blamed it all on right wingers on X. I’m actually surprised he lost because he blocks every single person who challenges him so I thought only his fans would be able to vote. I’m sure that he bragged that his block list is about 20k people..
He says women don’t like him because we are jealous of him 🤦♀️ He claims to be verified XX and literally ‘a real woman’. I think he is so deluded that he believes it. He doesn’t realize however, that even though a few XX men exist, they are generally infertile. As he has a son he is, in effect, denying he is his child’s father.
It’s quite ironic that in his efforts to prove himself a woman, he slips back into his male aggression and proves he is a man.
Yes he seems quite insane. Just recently he stated that he is completely all female even down to his bones. The skeleton is replaced every 10 years therefore thanks to cross sex hormones his bones are all female. Pure balderdash but almost amusing in his absurdity of desperately wanting to be seen as female.
He has confused jealousy with derision and mockery.
I remember that 🤦♀️ He is astonishingly ignorant not to know that his male cells will have been replaced with male cells. He even insisted that he is ‘c*s’ now. I can’t help worrying that he will decide he doesn’t need prostate checks and will put his health at even more risk. If he had friends they could sort him out, but I don’t think he has any.
Re Trump/heaven, I assumed that Trump is an atheist, albeit one who pretends he isn’t for the sake of his image. Perhaps in my desire to avoid him, I’ve just missed those photographs of him in church, singing hymns or him behaving in a christian manner. I find it hard to believe that he acknowledges that there is a being more bigly powerful and more hugely very, very intelligent, super intelligent, and stably genius than him.
He seems to have had a come to Jesus moment after Butler. He’s been vocal about this.
Thanks for letting me know, that’s a surprise. I look forward to seeing more demonstrations of christian behaviour. 😉
“God came up to me once. Big God, powerful God, tears streaming down his face, and he said to me, ‘Sir’ …”
😹😹😹very bigly.
🎯
The 2028 election will be interesting. There are, of course, a hard core of voters who will vote for whoever the Dems (or the GOP, for that matter) put up. in 2028, though, the Trump factor will be gone. A lot of the mud thrown at him over the last ten years has stuck, but the same effort has not been put in to vilify Vance. It’s also not clear that it would work, if for no other reason than the boy has cried wolf too many times already, to the point where it’s just white noise. People may disagree with Vance on policies, but there’s no Vance Derangement Syndrome. I think Newsom is a particularly bad candidate, both based on the record of his State and his public positions historically. Split screen adds showing that him having flip-flopped would be easy to make.
What is needed is someone from a purple state (to help ensure victory in that state) with solid middle-of-the-road credentials. One who can’t be painted with a far left brush, especially.
I wonder when the London bookies will start posting the odds of Vance heading a coup that replaces Trump. (I hope it’s non-violent, using the 25th Amendment.)
Important to consider Newsom’s snarky tweets are allegedly complied by a crew of 20 somethings, not him.
Pritzker is terrible for manifold reasons: I don’t follow Chicago politics much except when I want to feel better about the disaster NYC is becoming. But Chicago’s parking meter fiasco (billions!) said: “NYC, hold my beer”.
Excellent “forbidden woke words” from i/o. He (it is a he) is a scandalous fellow but worth reading.
Have a great weekend,
D.A.
NYC
Chris Rufo, Woke Right Gramscian.
Yes. The Democrats have started the speed dating process for 2028. Gavin Newsom is strutting the runway at the moment. He may or may not last. Governor Pritzker may be next. Briefly. (He’s a Jew.) Next up will be Gretchen Whitmer, a solid candidate but one whose star seems to have faded. (She should have been Biden’s successor.) We’ll see if she can come back to life and go supernova at some point. Shapiro of Pennsylvania? Popular in Pennsylvania, but may have already had too much exposure. (He’s also a J*w.) Then there’s Wes Moore. He has a pretty good shot, it seems to me. There will be others, probably including AOC. It’s hard to read the tea leaves at this point. The Democrats seem to have no real core, no principles or policies that can unite the Party. If they can’t build consensus on a North Star, they will remain a divided mess and most likely lose, whomever the candidate may be.
If the Dems run AoC, I will vote for whomever the Repubs run–even if it’s a mollusc, ringworm, or yeast.
“Molluscs and ringworms and yeast, oh my!”
(Dorothy, sort of)
I’m hopeful that Jason Crow gets pulled into the race.
For kicks, I checked for the word “leader” in the Constitution of the United States.
“Leader” occurs zero times.
Leader?
The “er” is wrong, presently you’re being lead… down some garden path.
Or being governed by a slab of lead, or both.
A little google quote:
“Learn about lead poisoning symptoms and treatment of lead exposure in children and adults.”
“Leader” in German is “Führer.”
Actually I was told it means “guide”. I asked about this when living in Germany many years ago and went into a bookstore where I found a hilariously titled book called “The Camping Fuhrer”. I imagined it contained old photos of Hitler in lederhosen camping in the Alps but was told it was just a guide to campgrounds in Germany.
“My Source News Opinion World” sounds like it was thought up by someone who writes instructions for cheap, Chinese-made appliances: “Is importantly to moving knob proper.”
A Monarchy for America sounds good, but you will also need Marquesses, Barons, and Dukes. I recommend that Serfin’ USA be played at the coronation, just so the the little people feel included.
But then again, a theocracy is more likely.
😀
“It’s also…Talk Like Shakespeare Day, National Cherry Cheesecake Day (the only acceptable substitute for plain)”
Thou liest, friend, for verily the cake
Of cheese with berries blue doth rate
Above the cherry. Howsome’er
The cherry doth enchant, the blue
And humble fruit I deem above the rest
Upon such sweet. Here do I make my stand.
Beautiful.
(As a scansion pedant, I’d modify the 3 lines of tetrameter into pentameter, forsooth.)
I may yet try turning this into a sonnet. 🙂
(Why yes, I do have a lot of time on my hands, why do you ask?)
I agree with you, Jerry: Nellie Bowles is a unique comic voice in her TGIF column.*
I found this week’s entry particularly lame (in comparison). The jokes were forced or obvious or puns.
(* I’m finding the FP to more and more a source of screeds and Trump fan-pieces (though to be fair, they do criticize him too). (I find Niall Ferguson hard to take. His smugness is yuge.) And the comments sections have become fairly like cesspools. You recently posted something from Stephen Pinker where he expressed that he had big hopes for the FP but that it is degrading quickly. I feel the same way. I regularly ask myself whether I should continue my paid subscription.)
Franklin’s “scientific accomplishments were enabled by the social and economic system he worked within.”
Does this mean that slavery, the male-only franchise, no welfare state etc enable scientific accomplishment? That all scientific accomplishments from imperfect societies are themselves imperfect? That you can’t do science if you don’t live in society?
It echoes, very slightly, Marx’s ‘Men make history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing,’ a statement somewhere between profound and banal.
The obsession with historical slavery seems a uniquely American preoccupation. You don’t see Italians complaining that Augustus owned slaves for example (though Augustus freed many of his slaves, some of whom continued to work for him as freedmen, so I guess he gets points for that). Likewise Brazil had heaps of slaves, often treated very brutally, and only ended slavery in 1888, yet we don’t hear much rhetoric about that shameful history.
This foreigner endorses that sentiment whole-heartedly. I suppose racial segregation between Emancipation and the civil rights ructions of the 1960s might be some justification for the lingering obsession, but I think the real reason is that black culture remains mired in dysfunction despite sixty years — four generations — of indulgence, excuses, affirmative action, and reparations, and some reason and blame for this failure that doesn’t point to themselves needs to be kept alive. I’ll refrain from making the obvious comment about American domestic politics.
Paul Skenes is indeed a phenomenon. However, he won’t be pitching for Pittsburgh once his rookie contract expires. The owner of the Pirates, Bob Nutting, simply doesn’t care about the team and refuses to (re)sign good players and pay them what other teams would. So no more Skenes.
Skenes may be the first pitcher to win a Cy Young with a losing record.