… time, the Herculaneum scroll haltingly gives up its words. And we get to sit back and be amazed at the technology that finds them.
[B]anning candidates from running for office due to financial crimes is highly dubious. The damaging effect on the democratic choice seems out of proportion to the crime in question, and (even coupled with a €2 million fine) is ineffective in punishing the party… [T]he idea that the party is being stifled by politically motivated “lawfare” — a claim likely amplified from the heights of the White House and Twitter/X — seems well-designed to galvanize its base… [T]he Rassemblement National can, even now, be beaten. But not like this.
“I think the Democrats’ brand is really bad, and I think this was an election based on culture,” [said Democratic Senator Mark Warner]. “And the Democrats’ … failure to connect on a cultural basis with a wide swath of Americans is hugely problematic… I think the majority of the party realizes that the ideological purity of some of the groups is a recipe for disaster and that candidly the attack on over-the-top wokeism was a valid attack.”
Mélanie Laroche, a professor at the Université de Montréal who specializes in the relationships between employers and unions, said Amazon’s decision [to close all of its operations in Quebec, very likely because of imminent unionization,] was not a surprise.
She said Quebec’s labour laws are more restrictive on businesses than elsewhere.
Amazon currently recognizes one other union, in Staten Island, N.Y. But it has not yet reached a collective agreement with them.
In Quebec, by contrast, labour law would have obliged the two parties to negotiate a collective agreement and could have imposed arbitration on them.
“Amazon was probably confronted with that imminent arbitration demand for a first collective agreement and wouldn’t have had a choice but to conclude a collective agreement,” she said.
“They’re deciding to close facilities in a province where perhaps the labour laws are much more restrictive for management.”
As for Quebec’s premier, he says this was a private decision by a private company. Like increasing numbers of politicians around the globe, he’s no Union Maid; and indeed the unionizing forces who generated this unfortunate outcome might have considered not only the growing conservatism in many countries – including their own – but also the quite healthy hourly wage Amazon Quebec employees enjoyed until they all lost their jobs.
Few people incorporate idiocy and degeneracy as intensely as Unity Mitford did. Reading her newly released diaries from 1935 is a mildly interesting way to spend a snowy afternoon.
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Probably terrorist. Definitely dead.
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‘An ISIS flag was attached to the pickup rear hitch.’
Retreat, as of today, is in the air. We dynamic postmoderns will race through the 5 Stages (Incredulity, Anger, Irony, Snark, RETREAT), and conclude on the one that will have us eyeing that extra, kind of do-nothing room in the house and sizing it up as a site of Stoic Elaboration — a place where you bolster yourself with Marcus Aurelius and with bolsters.
This sort of thing. Ideally, you want high windows and a view - urban or rural, but something of interest to contemplate as you sip your Senecan Brew. On stormy days, switch to What does not kill me makes me stronger-esque Nietzschean aphorisms. Or the astringent poetry of Weldon Kees.
... Water and wind and flight, remembered words and the act of love
Are but interruptions. And the world, like a beast, impatient and quick,
Waits only for those who are dead. No death for you. You are involved.
You are involved; no point, even in your tranquil new tearoom, in being uninvolved. Daily books and teas and views stimulate and calm you (all good tea stimulates and calms), and ready you and steady you for the bellowing bastards abroad. Your tearoom is indeed a retreat from imperiling stupidity; but, you know, as Henry James put it:
Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.
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More on emergent tearoom culture after I sit on the beach for awhile.
Unlike the proposed congestion fee in Manhattan that did not go into effect, the fee here is not one-size-fits-all. Here in the Hamptons, the fees charged will vary with the value of the automobile. Cars with low value, such as old Toyota Corollas, will be charged $5 per entry. Cars of midsize value, up to $60,000, will be charged $50 per entry. Cars valued up to $100,000 will be charged $200 per entry, and cars valued over that will be charged $999 per entry. The idea is to go easy on the locals, but hit the wealthy with a fee they wouldn’t mind but would seem appropriate. By the way, for cars valued over $250,000, the fee is zero. We are happy to have the ultra-, ultra, ultra-rich here. And though they will pay no fee, voluntary contributions will be appreciated, either by check, cash, stocks, bitcoin or money order. All will be tax deductible.
Sure it is. You can go after a child.
Mr. Miller stopped paying some of the family’s bills, including, according to a lawsuit, the maintenance and docking fees for their Van Dutch speedboat — a frequent backdrop for late-night parties shared on Instagram. Such models generally sell for more than $1 million…
… Emergency medical workers found Mr. Miller unconscious in a white Porsche Carrera that he had rigged to poison himself …
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UD never knows quite what to do with the NYT’s luridly fascinating chronicles of the downfall of high-flying, risk-taking idjits. She enjoys the F. Scott Fitzgerald fizz of these accounts, the lascivious tell of the departed’s lethally high-end products and adventures, his sudden weeping in corporate meeting rooms as the walls close in …
Since the fool in this case saw fit to borrow tens of millions of dollars he couldn’t pay back, and then to saddle his wife and small children with his debt (he left a big life insurance policy, but will it pay out?), one feels okay not feeling much. I mean, pity. I guess. But since the facts of the case are so stereotypically cautionary, so much the oldest allegory in the world, the specific person to whom it happened gets lost, and one not too guiltily feels comfortable reading the account the way most people are reading it – as a final twisted chapter of clueless conspicuous consumption, the short sad bio of an Instagram braggart who meets his apotheosis in a cloud of high-performance, super-exclusive, carbon monoxide.
“Dude I won’t even take calls from Ukraine,” [JD Vance said] three weeks after House Republicans blocked additional aid to help Kyiv repel the Russian invasion. “Two very senior guys reached out to me. The head of their intel. The head of the Air Force. Bitching about F16s.”
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On Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson:
“Never met him. He’s dead. Don’t care.”
He opposes no-fault divorce, including those who do so to leave abusive marriages. He’s compared abortion to slavery, supports a national abortion ban and rejects exceptions for rape – “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” he said. He called women without children “miserable cat ladies” and villified working moms as bad parents who want to “shunt their kids into crap day care so they can enjoy more ‘freedom.’” For him, universal child care amounts to “class war against normal people.”
You can sit around with the gin running out of your mouth; you can humiliate me; you can tear me to pieces all night, that’s perfectly okay, that’s all right. You make me sick. Be careful Kamala. I’ll rip you to pieces. Total war. .. Kamala is 108… years old. She weighs somewhat more than that… There are limits. I mean, a man can put up with only so much without he descends a rung or two on the old evolutionary ladder, which is up your line. Now, I will hold your hand when it’s dark and you’re afraid of the boogeyman and I will tote your gin bottles out after midnight so no one can see but I will not light your cigarette. And that, as they say, is that… You’re a monster – You are. You’re a spoiled, self-indulgent, willful, dirty-minded, liquor-ridden… In my mind you’re buried in cement right up to the neck. No, up to the nose, it’s much quieter. And please keep your clothes on, too. There aren’t many more sickening sights in this world than you with a few drinks in you and your skirt up over your head. Or “your heads,” should say. You can go around like a hopped-up Arab, slashing at everything in sight, scarring up half the world if you want to. But let somebody else try it? No. YOU SATANIC BITCH.’
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[thanks, albee]