October 14th, 2025
The Gammy Defense

“They claim that I, this grandma, was the mastermind behind this murder,” [Donna Adelson] said.

September 12th, 2025
‘[T]hat amount [of fentanyl] could [have] killed everyone in Spokane County four times.’

I guess when you put it like that, twenty years in prison doesn’t seem overlong.

September 8th, 2025
Wowsa. You know you’re in trouble when your homicide rate per 100,000 …

makes Puerto Rico look good.

Turks and Caicos lies very close to Haiti.

August 21st, 2025
“Every detail, from the cryotherapy chamber and the swimmable lake to the show kitchen and golf simulator, has been curated to create a home that is both a deeply restorative retreat and an extraordinary venue for entertaining.” 

As you know, UD finds some of her favorite sentences in real estate listings.

July 21st, 2025
UD’s quest to understand the Resurrection of Epstein continues.

JONATHAN ALTER:

Why is this so important to the MAGA base?

MICHAEL WOLFF:

I’m not sure. It seems contradictory, as Trump is most imperiled. But a mythology grew around Epstein as the epicenter of elites like Bill Clinton, and that’s what some believe Epstein might expose.

May 6th, 2025
Foster child of silence and slow…

time, the Herculaneum scroll haltingly gives up its words. And we get to sit back and be amazed at the technology that finds them.

May 1st, 2025
‘New York state will be able to authorize first responders to forcibly hospitalize mentally ill New Yorkers who cannot meet their own basic needs such as food, shelter or medical care.’

It’s about time.

April 1st, 2025
Jacobin, a Socialist journal, weighs in on the Marine Le Pen story.

[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.

February 16th, 2025
Brand X

“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.”

January 23rd, 2025
Not well played.

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.

January 19th, 2025
‘Today [Hitler] was so kind and divine that I suddenly thought I would not only like to kill all who say or do things against him but also to torture them.’

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.

January 1st, 2025
Madman or terrorist…

we’ll know soon enough.

***************

Probably terrorist. Definitely dead.

***************

‘An ISIS flag was attached to the pickup rear hitch.’

November 6th, 2024
Prolegomenon to your new in-house tearoom.

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.

************************

More on emergent tearoom culture after I sit on the beach for awhile.
September 2nd, 2024
So tons of people took this seriously, and they’ve been bombarding the local government with enraged letters.

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.

August 23rd, 2024
‘Remember Donald Trump Jr.’s sneer at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference? Referring to Senator John Fetterman’s struggles to recover after his stroke, Mr. Trump said that Pennsylvania had “managed to elect a vegetable.” “I’d love for John Fetterman to have, like, good gainful employment,” he continued. “Maybe he could be, like, a bag guy at a grocery store.” Is it possible to go any lower than that?’

Sure it is. You can go after a child.

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