I hardly ever hear the word “overdose” by itself anymore, as in “so-and-so died of an overdose.” It’s always “so-and-so died of an accidental overdose.” Isn’t that redundant? If you want to put it that way, wouldn’t the only alternative be an intentional overdose? Which would be a suicide. The word “overdose” implies accidental. Someone tried to make themselves feel better in a high-risk way and miscalibrated. So it’s either a suicide or an overdose, not an “accidental overdose.” End of story. Read more →
Chess Game of the Day: 8-Move Closed Sicilian
One of my online chess games. A few annotations below. 2. Nc3 (Closed Sicilian Defense) 5. …Bg4 Everything’s been pretty standard thus far but this is unusual compared to, say, Be7. 7. Nxe5! I’m generously giving myself an exclamation point on this. 7. …Bxd1?? That must have been very tempting but it leads to a forced mate. Better to take the knight on e5. 8. Bxf7+ After 8. …Ke1 (forced) 9. Nd5# is mate. Read more →
Psaki: “Unfair and Absurd”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed during Monday’s press briefing that it would be “unfair and absurd” for companies to raise costs on consumers in response to the Biden administration raising the corporate tax rate: Jen Psaki: It’s “unfair and absurd” that companies would increase costs for consumers in response to us taxing them more. ? pic.twitter.com/rHilrYdj4j — Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) September 28, 2021 You can depersonalize the theft by saying “Well, it’s corporate tax rates — greedy corporations, you know.” You don’t need to be an economist to understand that corporate taxes, like any taxes, have to be paid by people: either shareholders, or employees in the form of lower wages, or customers in the form of higher prices. The money has to come from somewhere. Read more →
A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
— Alexander Pope
A Solution for Abortion Access
From the Los Angeles Times: California law states that people have a “fundamental right” to choose and obtain an abortion before a fetus becomes viable. The governor has vowed to protect that right. But just because abortion has more legal protection in California does not mean it is readily accessible to all, advocates of reproductive choice say. Many Californians struggle to afford the procedure, and some live far from a clinic that provides it. Such practical barriers can make abortion too difficult to access for Californians, despite the legal assurances on the books, advocates say. What a calamity! There are no legal roadblocks to abortion in California, and yet a mother-to-be who doesn’t want to be a mother may still find the procedure inaccessible or unaffordable. What about condoms? Are condoms inaccessible or unaffordable? Read more →
If All We Want Are Jobs
If all we want are jobs, we can create any number — for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again, or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs — jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume. — Milton Friedman Read more →
Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect whether he chooses to be so or not. — Nathaniel Hawthorne
Work? Optional
Dirty Laundrie: How NOT to Commit the Perfect Murder
I have long maintained that the best way to kill someone and get away with it is to push them off a cliff. While hiking, for example. It’s simple, clean, no need to dispose of evidence, and proving beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law that the deceased didn’t just fall off the cliff accidentally is almost assuredly impossible. Unfortunately, the opportunity to push someone off a cliff is no longer on the table for me, having published in advance my admiration for cliffs as a murder weapon, but I’ve got other ideas as well. That said, the worst way to murder someone is to take them on a cross-country road trip, document the whole thing on social media, then drive home by yourself and disappear. Read more →
An Open Letter to My Former CEO
Today is my last day with Company X. I’ve really enjoyed working with my colleagues. That said, the events of two weeks ago really made me ill. To call an all-hands webinar, announce that the company is losing too much money, as a result of which 80 people will have their jobs taken away, then boom, meeting over. Not even the decency to take a comment or question. I feel like those 80 people probably did not lose the money, probably just did what they were told to do to the best of their ability. The responsibility for losing the money lies with whoever told them what to do, starting with the CEO. There’s a law of the sea, I think it’s a good law, that the captain goes down with his ship. Not that he grabs hold of 80 people and throws them overboard, then follows up with a… Read more →
London Breed: Next Governor of California?
San Francisco, like a lot of places, including Los Angeles County, where I live, has a mask mandate. You have to wear a mask indoors in public places, vaccinated or not. The woman in the photo, second from left, is London Breed, who as the mayor of San Francisco, would actually be the person responsible for issuing mask mandates, but she’s sitting in a club with no mask among a bunch of other people with no mask. I can’t even go into a convenience store and buy a soda unless I’ve got a mask on because someone will throw me out. The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, also a mandate issuer, just this week parlayed his “masks are for serfs” philosophy into a decisive victory in a recall election. Which may be why Mayor Breed is not only not apologizing (as Newsom did, sort of), but doubling down on “I… Read more →
Pronouns
I know people who identify themselves with plural pronouns, e.g., “they/them,” but I’ve never heard any of them refer to themselves with plural pronouns, e.g., “us” or “we.” They always say “I” or “me.” A couple of possibilities, not mutually exclusive: They want to call attention to themselves but in a way that they haven’t really thought through. They realize how ridiculous it sounds to refer to an individual person with a plural pronoun. I mean, go ahead and call yourself anything you want, but if you’re going to burden others with absurdities, you should have to live with them yourself. Read more →
A Review of This Year’s Met Gala!
Excerpts from an essay By Glenn Greenwald: When it comes to mask mandates, it is now commonplace to see two distinct classes of people: those who remain maskless as they are served, and those they employ as their servants who must have their faces covered at all times. . . . Last month, a delightful event was hosted by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for wealthy Democratic donors in Napa — the same wine region of choice for Gov. Newsom’s notorious dinner party . . . Pelosi’s donor gala took place as millions face eviction, ongoing joblessness, and ever-emerging mandates of various types. . . . Even though many of the wealthy white donors had no food in front of them and were not yet eating, there was not a mask in sight — except on the faces of the overwhelmingly non-white people hired as servants, all of… Read more →
If You Only Knew
If you only knew all the problems That a man like me has to face If you only knew all the little Things that keep a man from his place I wouldn’t want to bring you down I just don’t want to see you made a clown Nobody’s little dream come true If you only knew — Mose Allison Read more →
See You in Hell’s Kitchen
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Did you know that there’s a neighborhood in Manhattan called Hell’s Kitchen? I drop by randomly to say, “Bonjour douchebag, make me a waffle!” See you in Hell! Read more →
On the Infanticide Marie Farrar
Marie Farrar: month of birth, April Died in the Meissen penitentiary An unwed mother, judged by the law, she will Show you how all that lives, lives frailly. You who bear your sons in laundered linen sheets And call your pregnancies a ‘blessed’ state Should never damn the outcast and the weak: Her sin was heavy, but her suffering great. Therefore, I beg, make not your anger manifest For all that lives needs help from all the rest. — Bertolt Brecht, “On the Infanticide Marie Farrar” A translation of the entire poem is available here, among other places. Read more →
Good Catholics
You cannot be a good Catholic and support expanding a government-approved right to kill innocent human beings. — San Francisco archbishop Salvatore Cordileone San Francisco — that’s Nancy Pelosi’s parish! I’m not opposed to abortion myself but I am opposed to politicians like Pelosi and Biden who market themselves as “good Catholics” while maintaining a weird reverence for abortion. Read more →
Thomas Jefferson: Without Citing Any Evidence
My fellow Americans – I noticed during the Trump presidency that the press developed an affectation where they reported everything he said as “Trump said ‘blah blah blah,’ without citing any evidence.” [Emphasis is my own.] Why Trump was the only human being held to this standard was never clear to me, but I thought of it again this week and perhaps it’s time for a resurrection of “without citing any evidence.” For example, President Biden’s announcement of a victorious withdrawal from Afghanistan might have been better presented as “President Biden, without citing any evidence, called the American withdrawal from Afghanistan a success.” Or when the August jobs report was released, showing that the economy added a disappointing 235,000 jobs vs. an estimate of 720,000, to which the president responded “The Biden plan is working,” more meticulous reportage could have been “‘The Biden plan is working,’ said the president, without… Read more →
We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories. — Henry David Thoreau
Thomas Jefferson: Afghanistan Withdrawal a “Victory”?
My fellow Americans – President Biden has declared our withdrawal from Afghanistan a success. With all due respect, has this man lost his fucking mind? Imagine King George in 1783 declaring the British withdrawal from America a success. Afghanistan was our longest war — 20 years — but it’s not like we were fighting World War II over there. There had not been a US combat fatality in a year and a half until Biden got 13 soldiers blown up, left at least hundreds of Americans stranded with no way out of the country, created a humanitarian crisis affecting tens of millions of people, has our allies around the world pissing themselves, has turned America into a global laughingstock, and his response is that what happened was inevitable, despite his previous promises that it was not inevitable. As one president to another, I say to Mr. Biden that when you… Read more →