Scrolling Blog

THE SCROLLING BLOG

Featuring: quotidian updating (well, almost quotidian)

Buy Me a Beer: Just $2 While Supplies Last

Greenwich Village Falling

The Village had all the ingredients of a perfect urban ecosystem: charming old-world architecture, deep history, and a multiethnic character; affordable rent, a working-class Italian community that resisted rapid gentrification; ample public space (Washington Square Park), and a robust network of platforms for artistic expression. It resisted exploitation, mass demolition, and unchecked gentrification for much of the twentieth century. It had just enough charm and architectural dignity to be appealing, situated in Lower Manhattan, yet it remained a little too violent and working-class to draw the wealthiest mid-century elite.

The Village was rough and beautiful. It was jazz and folk, black and white, gay and straight. A pedestrian walking down MacDougal Street in the early 1960s would hear a cacophony of “strumming, coffee machines, and smatterings of applause” from coffeehouses and clubs. It was a place where a young Ornette Coleman could “dyna[mite] known boundaries,” and young folkies from out of town could enter a “more liberating world” just by knocking on the right door (often that of Village fixture, guitar teacher, and blues singer Dave Van Ronk).

Hollywood Falling?

[T]he film industry is abandoning Hollywood. Huge new production facilities are getting built everywhere except California.

There’s a mad rush to build a huge new studio in Las Vegas.

Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, New Jersey and other states are also aggressively competing for projects.

Just last week Apple TV+ agreed to film more projects in France.

Pressure for more “local content” are coming from all over the world. Netflix recently bragged that it has 40 projects underway in Europe, and may be even more committed to Southeast Asia.

It kinda makes me nostalgically sad, but Hollywood has been a moral and ideological cesspool from the start (though a few early titans tried to keep it ideologically non-toxic). It's hard to muster remorse at the prospect of it fading away and becoming Homelesswood (when I went there in 2019, I was struck by all the riff-raff that crawled around Hollywood's tourism area, and it seems the problem has gotten far, far worse since then).

[Not] BYCU

This has gotta be the most ridiculous marketing scam since the Pet Rock. I doff my hat to the fellows who pulled it off.

Thursday Column at Substack is Up

For some reason, podcast episodes "drop," while columns go up. Oh, those crazy metaphors!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this piece. Please share.

The Michigan Review

I had no idea this rag even existed . . . and it was at UM when I was there. The shame I feel.

Welcome to Number 9

Grandchild IX arrived this morning. Jude Francis Scheske.

And So Mexican-American War II Begins

New at Substack

A new era has dawned: Starting with this short essay, I will write now only for my own entertainment. No conceit is too great or too small: if something doesn't amuse me, I won't include it. It could be the turn of a phrase, it could be an off-color reference, it could be a rant that's over-the-top in its exaggerated prose, it could be an interesting fact. If I find it amusing, it meets my newly-minted publication litmus test.

Last summer, I was talking with one of my former editors who, IMHO, is one of the finest Catholic writers out there. He told me he religiously reads James Howard Kuntsler, primarily for his stunning prose. I've read JHK for years, but since that conversation, I've been reading him religiously as well, and now I've started dissecting his essays to figure out what makes them so amusing. The secret, if I've accurately plumbed the secret of JHK's fevered prose: Never write a dry paragraph like this one. If the paragraph ain't clicking with its author, everyone else is clicking away.

The First Four Days

Censorship, dead. . . Gain of function research, killed. . . CBDCs banned. . . CBP-app for aiding illegal migrants, discontinued. . . border fortified. . . homicidal alien mutts deported. . . World Health Organization, no thanks. . . Paris Climate Accords, fuggeddabowdit. . . DEI, vacated through all of government. . . Green New Deal, scrapped. . . “pride” in mental illness, cancelled. . . Ukraine War, headed for the negotiating table. . . all in four days and so much more coming.

Let's Hope This is Accurate and Davos is Dead

BYCU

From late last month, sorry I'm late:

Bucc-ee's!

http://pic.twitter.com/WJZm110H1t

Southern towns from Texas to Tennessee are attracting beautiful new Buc-ee’s locations, each of which will provide hundreds of entry-level jobs. The upcoming Memphis location is projecting a $2.5 billion economic impact, and the new Mississippi store will draw more visitors annually than Yellowstone. It’s impossible to capture the full majesty of Buc-ee’s on the page, but for the uninitiated, each location is kind of a spectacle: endless gas pumps, shining rows of porcelain urinals, beef jerky walls, kitschy beaver merch, road-tripping families… pure American spirit. Yes, a gas station chain that coastal elites have never heard of is making billions of dollars every year and reshaping middle America.

Merely Getting This Fundamental Legal Issue Resolved Would Help Enormously

Ross is Free

And federal government DEI and the El Paso immigration center are dead. I would hope even his most ardent haters appreciate his unabashed forthrightness, as well as his early follow-through with campaign promises.

His term is early, but wow: The Don ain't screwing around.

Addendum

Steven A. Smith, hardly a Trump fan, apparently appreciates Trump's follow-through:

The Day One Orders

Listed Here by Perplexity AI

The Inauguration Speech was Great

With a few clunkers. Renaming the Gulf?

And it's apparently a priority? Come on! Get Ross Ulbricht out. He said "Day One," but I'm willing to interpret that as "within the first 24 hours." Elon Tweeted this morning (Tuesday) that it's going to happen, though he didn't say when.

First Asian Voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame

Consolation to Detroit Lions Fans

25 Most Affordable Cities: Detroit is #1

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-25-most-affordable-cities-in-america/

From White Guy for Kamala to Removing Tampon Dispensaries from the Men's Room

He started training in the Brazilian grappling martial art form during Covid-19 lockdowns, and by 2023, was medaling in local competitions and boasting a blue belt. In 2024, he acted as an enthusiastic if awkward corner man for a featherweight fighter in UFC 298. The internet memed him, but the league greeted him with open arms, with one fighter climbing the Octagon’s sides to give Zuck a high-five. He called the mixed martial arts community “very welcoming” in a three-hour interview with Joe Rogan this week, his second appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience in as many years.

Zuckerberg also invited UFC head Dana White to be on the board of Meta, calling him a “world-class entrepreneur with a strong backbone.”

The Zuckerberg of 2018 would not have publicly praised Trump, as he did this summer, for his reaction to his assassination attempt calling it “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.”

The Zuck of the Covid era wouldn’t have talked to Rogan at all, much less marveled at Mike Tyson’s twenty-inch neck circumference in his prime. Pre-jiu-jitsu Zuckerberg wasn’t bow-hunting wild boar and harvesting meat to teach his children to “understand the circle of life” or saying corporate culture is too neutered in its current state and needs to balance that with more masculine energy and aggression.

It’s hard to think of a subculture that previewed the vibe shift more clearly than MMA — away from censorship and lockdowns, toward more messy freedom and fun. Here’s hoping all the time he’s practiced not getting choked out means fewer submissions in the future.

“Local coffee shops, like taverns in the past, provide a service that the masses desire. Because of coffee’s popularity, coffee shops can draw people together like very few other modern institutions. In my experience, coffee has become the new social lubricant that opens the door for important relationships and discussions. The best place to unite America is not national politics, but local businesses that bring people together.”

"President-elect Donald Trump is preparing an executive order that could reshape U.S. cryptocurrency policy by establishing a Crypto Advisory Council, reviewing existing regulations and legal actions, and proposing a National Bitcoin Reserve. These initiatives aim to foster collaboration between the government and the crypto industry, create a more innovation-friendly regulatory framework, and position the United States as a global leader in digital asset adoption, sparking optimism among market participants and industry stakeholders."

BYCU: Hard Times Looming for Craft Beer?

After two decades of meteoric success, the craft brewing industry has hit an inflection point: More breweries closed than opened last year, the first time that has happened since 2005. . . .

What we’re seeing now is a combination of factors. People’s 10-year leases are coming up, and their rent is going up in a way that’s not sustainable. Beer is a low-margin business. In the 2010s, when people were coming and buying four-packs of hazy I.P.A. for $16, $18, $20 directly from breweries, that was a very lucrative time. But what is happening now is I think people are a little bit tighter with their dollars.

Now you have to make great beer just to have a seat at the table. What else can you do to endear yourself? If you’re a taproom business, you need to think about events. You need to think about what food you’re offering. You think about what nonalcoholic drinks you can have. What does it mean to be a brewery in 2025?

Catholic Missionary Just Released a Fiction Book

I'm only through the first chapter so far, but his brothers tell me that they are genuinely enjoying the story.

Lifetime Mystery Solved

This must be why dogs bury their nose in my crotch. I guess I didn't appreciate that I was emanating paradise down there.

New Page Published at TDE

The Outrage of the LA Fires in Ten Minutes

Just listen to the first part of this interview.

Multiculturalism, DEI, Wokism: These Ivy League Mind Diseases Have Real Consequences

As girls in Great Britain have learned over the past decades. Is Los Angeles learning it, too?

America's Most Livable Cities

Eat some salt with this list. It puts San Francisco at 18, but quite a few of the others (like Ann Arbor, Portland (Maine), and Des Moines) ring true.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-20-most-livable-cities-in-the-u-s/

Brews You Can Use

Drink like a Chicagoan: Drink Jepsson's malört. Jeppson's website says it's a traditional wormwood-based digest and a Chicago drinker's rite of passage.

Ed Zotti writes about trying a Chicago Handshake ("a shot of malört plus an Old Style, a popular beer in Chicago, to serve as flame retardant") recently. He said it wasn't nearly as bad as he feared:

I thought I’d be spitting up blood. I glanced at Charlie, who also seemed unfazed, then at Jess, who’d been watching for adverse reactions. “Like grapefruit and dandelions,” she said.

Imagine my predicament. I’d been expecting to write another crazy-stuff-they-do-in-Chicago story. Now I faced the prospect of having to tell a baffled world that an obscure beverage even locals consider revolting actually has its points.

Well, so be it. In this era of fake news, one need to call ’em like one sees ’em. We ordered another round. I started a fresh page in my notebook.

The initial sensation is deceptive — honeylike, some say, owing to the coating of the tongue, but you can make the case for an oil slick. This erupts into an interval of alcohol-fueled turbulence, like sex during July when the AC is out, and over just as quickly, leaving behind a lingering acrid taste, blotted only partially by the beer.

This last phase figures prominently in descriptions of malört. Grapefruit? I’ll buy that. (My limited dandelion consumption didn’t permit judgment.) What you’re looking at experientially, though, is an extended period of melancholy contemplation. Once that passes — and all things pass — you’re left with a modest glow, fortifying you to step out into a cold night.

Not a priority in Miami Beach, maybe. But — acknowledging that even in Chicago some will argue the point — I can say it works here.

Aside

Drinking essays are consistently funny and stylistically rewarding. From Kingsley Amis to the artists at Modern Drunkard Magazine to Ed Zotti at The Spectator, they're great.

BYCU

Pump.com

That "Tales from the Crypto" essay below is great. Ross Anderson recounts and takes down the miscreants, frauds, and freaks (collectively, "gamblers") who have invaded the crypto market over the past years. His account of Pump.com, where people could launch their own "shitcoin" and then pump it in hopes that morons would buy it, is especially humorous. In their efforts to use Pump.com's livestream feature to pump the price of their shitcoins,

A man threatened to hang himself; another, to shoot up a school; another, to kill his dog. A woman had sex with a dog; a man punched himself repeatedly; another threatened to waterboard a person tied up in the background behind them. The sex shows were relatively tame compared to people streaming themselves playing Russian roulette (thankfully, never getting unlucky). Crypto was supposed to free us from the evils of traditional finance, I remind myself, as I hear of the armed teenager who said he’d kill his entire family with a shotgun unless his coin reaches a market cap of $60,000.

After a few days of chaos, pump.fun turned off the livestreaming feature.

Anderson, btw, isn't anti-crypto. He's just anti-fraud and anti-stupidity. He strikes me as fairly agnostic when it comes to prognosticating crypto's future. He even seems a bit excited about companies like Jack Dorsey's company, Block (ticker symbol: SQ . . it used to be called "Square"). I bought a few shares this morning, but just a few . . . I'm not a hardcore miscreant, fraud, and freak.

Fun Fact

On the release of the Access Hollywood tape ["Grab 'em by the *****], some European betting shops said that Hillary had 25:1, 35:1 odds of beating Trump.

On Working without Working. Or Working While Walking the Little Way. Or Working Like a Zen Master

"There is no greater pleasure in ordinary life, so-called, than to see a bus-conductor, a teacher, anybody, really engrossed in his work, with no thought of its relative or absolute value, with no thought of its interest or profit to himself or others." R.H. Blyth, Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics (1942, 2016 reprint by Angelico Press)

Greenland: The 51st State

In the Era of Crazy, Everything is Crazily Possible

http://pic.twitter.com/HoaRmab5NR

Quote

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."

-Thomas Sowell

But I Believe Change is Coming

The More Education, the Dumber the Result

To be precise, the more education, the stronger the left hemisphere's grip on a person's existence, which results in more stupidity.

Happy New Year

"Happy Holidays" or "Merry Christmas"? (I use both.)

When do you stop saying "Merry Christmas" (technically, on January 6th, I suppose, but it starts feeling kinda weird to me by about December 28th).

And now, when do you stop saying "Happy New Year"? I'm thinking by January 9th this year: first full week of work is Monday, the 8th: HNY is probably still appropriate. Come the 9th? It starts getting a smidegon awkward. Definitely by the 15th, though Elaine in Seinfeld noted with irritation that she once got "Happy New Yeared" in February.

TDE at Telegram

The True Christmas Story that Never Gets Old

And the vile reality that is the State that makes it compelling

When Do Americans Open Gifts?

Rather than the ghost story being about Christmas, Christmas is about ghosts; for it is that time of year when the ghosts of those we have lost crowd most thickly around us.

BYCU

If there’s one thing Generation Z can be relied on to do, it’s make things creepy and weird where they were previously straightforward and commonplace. Having weirded out romantic intimacy, they’ve come for Guinness. It has become so popular among Gen Z that pubs this December are experiencing a Guinness shortage.

Social media accounts like Shit London Guinness show drinkers criticizing imperfectly poured pints. In a trend that is almost too cringey to watch, Guinness-related Instagram and TikTok posters perform the “tilt test” to their presumably American tourist fans, excited to be unleashed on legal drinking after a twenty-one-year wait in their land. The tilt test involves holding the drink at an angle: if it has been poured correctly, it ought not to slosh out. Wow! Crazy, dude!

Then there is “splitting the G,” in which drinkers attempt a single first swig so the remaining liquid ends up intersecting the Guinness logo. It’s a trend that combines a lackluster approach to downing a pint with something that sounds vaguely sexualized. No doubt we’ll soon be told that “splitting the G” is problematic.

BYCU

Disney Finally Docking the Woke Ship?

But man, you know they're just itching to bring it back.

Eight years ago progressives denied that such a conspiracy existed and attacked anyone pointing out the contrary. Then they admitted that the woke conspiracy existed but argued that anyone against it was a bigot and a fascist. Today, the agenda is so thoroughly exposed and opposed by the majority of the public that, finally, corporations are starting to reverse course and return to some semblance of normalcy.

Repackaged Micro-Essay at Substack

Drinking Quote

"I could never see why a man who is not free to open his mouth to drink should be free to open it to talk. Talking does far more direct harm to other people." GKC, Illustrated London News, July 30, 1921.

BYCU

Funny Quote

"There's one thing you can say for the people in charge of our government. They're running it like nobody's business." Joe Sullivan

From Whence this Populist Revolution on the Right?

This nifty piece lays out the history and the current situation. The writer concludes with, "This is the fight before us."

And it will be a fight. If this is a revolution (and I think it is), it won't go as expected. No revolution does. But that doesn't mean it won't succeed. It just means we can't get complacent because of the November elections. We're still behind the eightball. I'm just grateful that, for the first time in 30 years, people in my fold are getting a chance to break.

And BTW: The man who has been pounding this populist drum since the end of the Cold War is Pat Buchanan. He's been proven right . . . again and again. He's also a devoted son of the Church with a firm grasp of its social teachings. He retired from public life last year. I'm just glad he's lived long enough to see himself vindicated after decades of scorn from the MSM.

"The very definition of Hell must be energy without joy." G.K. Chesterton, Introduction to Thackeray

Coffee Your Way to Good Health

Deadly Sins at Deady Media

The Military-Industrial Complex Gleefully Rubs Its Hands

Bitcoin Hits $100,000

I'm "all about" alternatives to the dollar, and Bitcoin is the best alternative out there . . . maybe, I think . . . frick, I don't know, but I'm enjoying my handful of satoshis even though I'll never have remotely enough to retire off these gains. It's mostly just (for me, a guy who rarely bets more than $5) a high-stakes gamble but low enough that it doesn't cause me any stress.

Interlocutor: "Eric, isn't crypto just a form of gambling?"

Eric: "No. Gambling is for smart people."

Using DoorDash?

You Might Want to Stop

This funny essay is packed with interesting, disturbing, and funny observations.

Interesting

"In 2024, 50 percent of U.S. consumers used food delivery services like GrubHub, DoorDash, Instacart, and Uber Eats daily. 60 percent weekly. That number rises to 67 percent for Gen Z."

Disturbing

"This is a genuine survey: In 2019, 28 percent of food delivery drivers admitted to in some way tampering with the order. In 2022 that number shot up to 79 percent."

Funny

"I’d like to say something smarmy like 'You people should tip better,' but [the drivers] aren’t feeding you semen because they’re upset about their pay; they do it because it’s a compulsion. A fetish. A bigger tip would just be seen as a five-star rating for their jizz."

Read Books

The Soul You Read May Be Your Own

Our digital lives are mediated through words, whether the tumult of Twitter or the doom-scrolling of Reddit, the ever-present ping of texts and the flux of Facebook. Yet this is an estimably different experience than the immersion in Wuthering Heights or Moby-Dick, Mrs. Dalloway and Ulysses. What’s been sacrificed is not reading in the most prosaic sense, but the particular experience of a certain type of reading, perilously endangered among all of us attracted to the alluring siren-call of the smartphone ping.

Readerly “flow” allows for a submersion in another way of being, an expansion of possibilities and consciousness.

Moloch Again Eats Its Own

Retailers need to keep Black Friday hyped, but if they don't spread Black Friday out on both ends, they'll lose to retailers who do, so everyone cannibalizes everyone. The loser: Black Friday.

Meditations on Moloch

One of the Best JRE Episodes of All Time

I knew we would have been screwed if the Democrats had won. And I sensed it was very, very bad. This (former) Democrat donor and Silicon Valley Prince provides inside facts about just how bad things would've been.

A CCP Credit Score, for instance, but privatized through a handful of tech companies that the federal government would control. That's just one of a dozen or so jaw-dropping things explained here.

BYCU

Thanksgiving Eve

Birth of the NHL

From Britannica's 11/26/2024 entry this morning:

The National Hockey League (NHL) was formed on this day in 1917, featuring just four teams: the Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Wanderers, Ottawa Senators and Toronto Arenas. The NHL added its first American club, the Boston Bruins, in 1924.

Government spending tends to hurt the poor, and inflation (resulting from deficit government spending) definitely hurts the poor.

Schumacher and McGilchrist

I've long wanted to tie A Guide for the Perplexed to the hemisphere hypothesis. I think the subject deserves a small book of exploration, but I've contented myself for now with this short treatment.

BTW: I finished The Matter with Things. It "only" took me 22 months to get through 1,500 pages. I'm now going back through my Kindle highlights, which print out to 250 pages on MS Word (single-spaced, but with a lot of gaps, like:

Highlight (yellow) - Page 53 · Location 789

One way of looking at paradox is as an indicator that we are dealing with two apparently valid world-pictures which yet do not concur.

Highlight (yellow) - Page 55 · Location 813

The right hemisphere sees the nuances, as well as that we often must embrace two superficially incompatible truths in a ‘both/ and’ – one, moreover, that includes embracing both its own take and that of the left hemisphere: altogether a far harder, and more complex, view to articulate.

)

BYCU

Jeffrey Bernard was so forthright in his self-immolation that critic and filmmaker Jonathan Meades described the Low Life column as “a suicide note in weekly installments.”

Kuntsler

Satire

Hot War with the Cartels?

This is the Most Insanely Optimistic Essay I've Ever Read

I just hope this guy is reasonably close to being right.

Summary: When these high-functioning Aspergerites with a grudge and hatred for DC arrive, they're going to smash the average swamp rats who lazy about there now. Kamala and Co. couldn't outwit Trump. You think they're going to outwit Elon? This might be the greatest theater since . . . well, since forever. Of course, it might be a catastrophe. I have no freakin' idea but I'm excited to see it play out.

DC is about to experience something entirely new, something absolutely unprecedented in its experience. They think the barbarians are coming. And perhaps they are. But not the kinds of barbarians they suspect. Not this time.

DC is going to feel like it’s being invaded by an entire bestiary of mythical monsters with magical powers who can see through walls and huck immovable objects over the horizon. They will come from every side at once. They will replace thousands of federal employees right from the start.

You’ll be fighting against the outside and the inside. They’re going to transfer and move those permanent staters they cannot fire. Have fun in Topeka or Guam. They’re lovely this time of year.

They are not going to play nice or play fair. They are going to get things done. And they are going to clown you while doing it, clown you like “name their agency after a crypto shitcoin that muskrat ran “to the moon” just because they think it’s funny.”

And it will be.

Good-Bye Cheney and Bill Kristol

WaPo and the MSM Continue to Label People with Different Views as "Fringe" and "Contrarians"

Taibbi says they need to check the election returns.

It's time to wake up to late 2024. The ancien régime is dead. Well, it has sustained a nasty and life-threatening blow. I guess it's up to people like you and me to make sure we drive a stake through its heart.

More Expansive Treatment of My Trip to Lisbon

Something for Sunday Morning

Bill Maher on the Elections

I'm not a fan. He hates Trump and thinks Trump is a threat to Democracy. He buys into many other leftist tropes with a dogmatism that makes the left hemisphere of the brain proud, but he tries to be honest, and he is humorous.

First, the Fascist Trump Came for Massively Obese, and No One Objected. Then He Came for the Morbidly Obese . . . and then He Came for the Overweight . . . and then He Came for Mothers Who Had Just Given Birth and Just Needed a Few Months to Take Off the Baby Fat . . . .

Let's hope RJK, Jr. can help. I can personally testify that the things he rails against were killing me. Since I started following Medicine 2.0, my weight and waist are down to my high school graduation weight, and a host of health problems, from eczema to lower back pain, have improved. I would get cocky and start preaching, but I've been led to believe I'm still mortal and life/fate are fickle things, so I just try to be content with my improvement and thank God for every day.

BTW: I learned recently that nursing school students take turns wearing fat suits so their classmates can learn their nursing skills in a realistic environment (i.e., in an environment of fat patients). Our whole culture has turned obesely grotesque. Thank God for the based men under age 35 who are fiercely determined to take it back or, failing that, to turn their backs on it.

And they don't give a damn what the namby-pambies think.

TDE Reader Quips

Gretchen Whitmer is so concerned about the Republicans getting the Michigan house, she went to Nacho Adoration.

BTW: If someone could mobilize the Amish vote in Michigan like Scotty Presler did in Pennsylvania, that would probably cement things against Whitmer in her next run.

Candidate for Best Post-Election Metaphor

Men were demonized. Emasculated. Blamed for all society’s ills. Men were told to take a seat and shut up. It was socially acceptable and encouraged to be vicious to anyone with a penis — unless they were a “woman” with a “penis.” . . .

The Democrats realized too late that they had Bud Lighted their brand. You can’t be openly hostile to men for two decades and expect to retain the male vote. And judging by Trump’s gains with both genders, you also can’t be incapable of defining what a woman is and expect women to believe you care about them, either.

Whether the left realizes it or not, the Bud Light moment was the beginning of the end of their long-standing grip on the culture. It lost them 23 percent of their market share and still hasn’t recovered. Trump’s recent win is more evidence. He won decisively, a collective middle finger from an America tired of being lectured.

The Tide Continues to Turn

Excerpt from his letter to Google, Apple, Et Al

I am confident that once the ongoing transition is complete, the Administration and Congress will take broad ranging actions to restore the First Amendment rights that the Constitution grants to all Americans—and those actions can include both a review of your companies’ activities as well as efforts by third-party organizations and groups that have acted to curtail those rights.

For now, I am writing to obtain information from you that can inform the FCC’s work to promote free speech and a diversity of viewpoints. As you know, Big Tech’s prized liability shield, Section 230, is codified in the Communications Act, which the FCC administers.2 As relevant here, Section 230 only confers benefits on Big Tech companies when they operate, in the words of the statute, “in good faith.”

It is in this context that I am writing to obtain information about your work with one specific organization—the Orwellian named NewsGuard. As exposed by the Twitter Files, NewsGuard is a for-profit company that operates as part of the broader censorship cartel.

FCC Commissioner's Letter

The Return Eudemon: Lisbon

I got back from Lisbon last night. I'm more jetlagged than Donald Trump after his last two days of campaigning (though according to Walter Kirn, who traveled with J.D. Vance for a short spell during the campaign, jet travel isn't bad when you don't have to deal with airports).

Lisbon is wonderful—flat-out wonderful. We visited during a low tourist ebb, and the weather was spectacular (72 and sunny every day; upper 50s at night, no rain). Those things helped, but I'd recommend Lisbon to anyone, especially since it's only an 8-hour flight.

The problem is, time is running out. The first direct flights by U.S. airlines (United and American) promise a flood of American tourists starting in 2025. That's why we went this year (I read in The Spectator that Lisbon would soon be ruined by tourism). I'm not sure I would've liked Lisbon if it was crowded. It was fairly crowded with just the light tourist load we experienced. I think it's because the Portuguese themselves like to enjoy their capital, and the "happening" area of Lisbon is very small (we were never more than one mile from where we wanted to walk next), with the result that there was almost always a healthy flow of traffic (foot and vehicular). I can't imagine how brutal it would be if the tourism traffic was exponentially higher.

However, I think tourists will be able to find a place to eat even if they go in July 2025. I've never seen such a high concentration of restaurants; they're everywhere, every few feet. Lisbon's eatery density far surpasses Manhattan, London, and Rome.

Dispatches from Academia

A text I received from a student at a Michigan public university today, talking about the reaction to Trump's win:

The dance school is having a more traditional meltdown. Group cry sessions, therapy dogs, professors declaring today a "mental health day," and all the fun.

Trump!

I am stunned. I am encouraged. Thoughts flow through my head like cocaine through Hunter Biden's nose. In no particular order:

Free Ross Ulbricht "on day one." He violated laws that probably shouldn't be laws (no firm opinion on that) and got FAR more time than the offenses warranted. I would've voted for Trump on this issue alone, though he should've freed Ross during his first term.
Hail Bitcoin! It is the future of freedom. I truly believe that. If the government doesn't start imprisoning people and chopping off their hands for using it, I think it will pave the way to avoid an Orwellian future. Maybe by 2028, it will be so ensconced that it can't be rooted out.
Speaking of which, Let's start making Orwell fiction again! Yeah, baby!
If it weren't for Roe v. Wade getting overturned and putting abortion on the ballot, I'm not sure Kamala would've gotten a single electoral vote (excuse my exaggeration). Trump may not be a "true blue" pro-lifer, but at least he'll let us debate and argue the point for four more years without censorship.
25% of black men voted for Trump? I can almost feel my heart melting after getting stone cold after all the BLM and Harris b.s. Similar hat tips to my Latino brothers who crossed over.

Trump walking back into the White House on January 20, 2025! pic.twitter.com/ghSYwysV7E
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) November 6, 2024

Now at Substack

When Jennifer Lopez Speaks, Everyone Needs to Listen

Do You Need a Concrete Example of How the Left Hemisphere's Arrogant, Rational, and Language-Driven Presumptions Causes Terrible Harm?

From page 1076 of Iain McGilchrist's The Matter with Things:

I was shocked to learn from an anaesthetist during my medical training that human infants were operated on well into the 1980s without anaesthetics, because, unable to verbalize their pain, they were clearly not capable of feeling it. Their screams and cries were like those of animals, creakings of a machine.

All You Need to Know about Media Matters and Center for Countering Digital Hate

MMA was founded by self-described “right-wing hit man” turned Clintonian convert David Brock and is funded by wealthy blue donors. While it once had a more down-the-line watchdog reputation, it now officially represents itself as an opponent specifically of “conservative misinformation.” From its 2021 tax disclosure:

CCDH, meanwhile, is intertwined both with Keir Starmer’s Labour Party and the Labour Together think-tank, which since August has been boasting about its aid to the Kamala Harris campaign. [Which Labour denies . . . unconvincingly, according to Taibbi]

Stock Cash?

A Vote for Trump Isn't a Vote Against Kamala

It's a vote against The Machine. It's a signal to The Machine that they can't get away with this crap any longer.

Trump Keeps Calling Things Correctly

While discussing Cheney with Tucker Carlson, Trump said:

"She's a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, ok? Let's see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.

"You know they're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying 'oh gee, let's send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy."

Drudge and other leftists are saying he's calling for her execution. Unbelievable. If that's what they think, then stop sending our youth to fight in foreign wars. Enough.

Free Month of Eric Scheske's Substack or Outside Modern Limits

Look for an email from Substack to get started

If you become a paid subscriber to ESS or OML through a targeted email sent by Substack, I get the monthly subscription fee from Substack . . . it costs you nothing. If you get such a targeted email, please accept. I could use the dopamine hit. The offer is only good until November 4th.

The Ultimate Black Swan

[F]or the atheist, an encounter with God in whatever happens after death might be seen as the ultimate Black Swan event . . . Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things

Gosh, I Wish This Was an Onion Headline

Great hat pic.twitter.com/SGLFiVTxos
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 29, 2024

Halloween Meditation

It seems like half of my local culture jumped the gun and celebrated last weekend, and the other half is eschewing the macabre side of Halloween, which, of course, is the only side there is. Unfortunate? Yes, but so is death unless there is everlasting life. The macabre throws this ultimate reality into stark relief. We ought not to celebrate the macabre, but we must not suppress it either.

The macabre might also be, in part, a rejection of the Enlightenment and yet another route to re-energize the right hemisphere and its embrace of the trans-rational, much as the occult is a rejection of rationalism and its left hemispheric overlord.

The Gothic genre is particularly suited to depicting these elements. This genre emerged as a knee-jerk reaction to the Enlightenment, expressing a desire for something beyond that which is observable and scientifically quantifiable.

The Internet is 55 Years Old?

From Britannica's October 29, 2024 entry:

Fifty-five years ago today a message was sent from a computer at UCLA to one at Stanford University over a network that would become the Internet.

A Member of That Based Z Generation Sends This Along

Based, adj., Willingness to express unpopular or controversial opinions, often associated with defiance of woke or politically correct dogmas.

Welcome Matilda Joan

The Ocho arrives. My daughter gave birth to a daughter on Thursday. Everyone is doing well. This is grandchild eight. The sexes are tied: 4-4. My third son's first born is scheduled to arrive in February and another baby is scheduled for mid-2024, which will give me ten. I'm hoarding them like a miser does coins.

"Matilda" is named after St. Margaret of Scotland. "Joan" after the Arc.

A common derivation of Matilda is "Maude." The girl's father detests that diminutive. I suspect I'll be using it a lot (smile).

source

I discovered this splendid writer before everyone else (insufferable smug emoji)

With free speech and free enterprise, hope springs eternal

In recent years, the Yale Free Press, Harvard Salient, and Columbia Sundial have emerged to fulfill similar needs at their respective schools. Heterodox and conservative journalism is undergoing a revival in the Ivy League.

The Seven Thinkers and Groups That Have Shaped JD Vance’s Unusual Worldview

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/18/jd-vance-world-view-sources-00168984

Greenwich Village Falling

Hollywood Falling?

[Not] BYCU

Thursday Column at Substack is Up

The Michigan Review

Welcome to Number 9

And So Mexican-American War II Begins

New at Substack

The First Four Days

Let's Hope This is Accurate and Davos is Dead

BYCU

Bucc-ee's!

Merely Getting This Fundamental Legal Issue Resolved Would Help Enormously

Ross is Free

Addendum

The Day One Orders

The Inauguration Speech was Great

First Asian Voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame

Consolation to Detroit Lions Fans

From White Guy for Kamala to Removing Tampon Dispensaries from the Men's Room

BYCU: Hard Times Looming for Craft Beer?

Catholic Missionary Just Released a Fiction Book

Lifetime Mystery Solved

New Page Published at TDE

The Outrage of the LA Fires in Ten Minutes

Multiculturalism, DEI, Wokism: These Ivy League Mind Diseases Have Real Consequences

America's Most Livable Cities

Brews You Can Use

Aside

BYCU

Pump.com

Fun Fact

On Working without Working. Or Working While Walking the Little Way. Or Working Like a Zen Master

Greenland: The 51st State

Quote

But I Believe Change is Coming

The More Education, the Dumber the Result

Happy New Year

TDE at Telegram

The True Christmas Story that Never Gets Old

When Do Americans Open Gifts?

BYCU

BYCU

Disney Finally Docking the Woke Ship?

Repackaged Micro-Essay at Substack

Drinking Quote

BYCU

Funny Quote

From Whence this Populist Revolution on the Right?

Coffee Your Way to Good Health

Deadly Sins at Deady Media

The Military-Industrial Complex Gleefully Rubs Its Hands

Bitcoin Hits $100,000

Using DoorDash?

You Might Want to Stop

Interesting

Disturbing

Funny

Read Books

The Soul You Read May Be Your Own

Moloch Again Eats Its Own

One of the Best JRE Episodes of All Time

BYCU

Thanksgiving Eve

Birth of the NHL

Social Justice Warriors, Take Note of This Fundamental Economic Fact

Schumacher and McGilchrist

BYCU

Kuntsler

Satire

Hot War with the Cartels?

This is the Most Insanely Optimistic Essay I've Ever Read

I just hope this guy is reasonably close to being right.

Good-Bye Cheney and Bill Kristol

WaPo and the MSM Continue to Label People with Different Views as "Fringe" and "Contrarians"

Taibbi says they need to check the election returns.

More Expansive Treatment of My Trip to Lisbon

Something for Sunday Morning

Bill Maher on the Elections

First, the Fascist Trump Came for Massively Obese, and No One Objected. Then He Came for the Morbidly Obese . . . and then He Came for the Overweight . . . and then He Came for Mothers Who Had Just Given Birth and Just Needed a Few Months to Take Off the Baby Fat . . . .