I see the online April Fools jokes have already started. Remember folks, 99% of you aren’t as hilarious as you think you are.
Might be about time to re-read some Saul Alinsky.
Justice Department goes to bat for Trump in hush money case
With all the other shit going down, it’s easy to forget that co-President Trump is still a convicted felon.
Democrat members of Congress are calling for an investigation of Signalgate by the DOD Inspector General. Perhaps they’ve forgotten that the Inspector General was (illegally) fired two months ago.
Micro.blog has been a trouble-free pleasure for a month. Upping my subscription to yearly. Thanks @manton!
Finished reading: The Whisper of the Axe 📚. I’d guess most people only know Richard Condon thanks to THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, but he wrote a whole bunch of wacky conspiracy novels. In this case, it’s the story of a grassroots movement to stage a huge terror attack in the US on July 4, 1976, funded by heroin sales and aided by covert Chinese training in a hidden terrorist camp. Featuring many secret agents, brainwashing, organized crime, and double-crosses, it literally resolves in the last sentence on the last page, and then leaves the reader wondering. A fine read.
Finished reading: The Eagle’s Shadow 📚. Though this was Jame Branch Cabell’s first published novel, it comes comparatively late in the reading order of the Biography of Manuel, so I’m just getting to it (for the second or third time, I forget). It is a somewhat slight comic novel along traditional “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl” lines, complicated by a bit of comic business including multiple wills and a number of Lichfield personalities (who you will have met in other of his books, if you’ve been reading the whole set). I have the 1929 Storisende Edition (#1138 of 1590 numbered copies) which, in addition to being a physically lovely book, contains an appendix reprinting letters from the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW. The bulk of these letters, from the novel’s first 1904 publication, deplore the awful vulgarity and profanity of the heroine (she says “Damn you!” in one pivotal scene) and mostly do not believe a well brought-up woman would even know that sort of language.
“Visitor”
Olympus E-M10 IV, Meike 25mm f/1.8 lens with Viltrox 250 macro lens, 1/320s, ISO 100. Along Eugene’s Ridgeline Trail.
The bear case on big generative AI. I think he may be overindexing on DeepSeek, but the general point (that it is very unlikely all the investment in data centers and power generation can ever pay off) strikes me as at least reasonable. Of course, I’m a complete GenAI skeptic.
“Contemplation”
Olympus E-M10 IV, M.Zuiko 14-42 kit lens @ 14mm, f/9, 2s, ISO 500. Salmon Creek Falls.
