This isn’t Jeff Tweedy’s fault, but I still view Trump Tower looming over the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot cover buildings as a metaphor for Gen X’s relationship to Trumpism

Listening to this, which is very good, but at one point it says that the Revolutionary War was the only time that the French Navy was more important than the French Army, and that’s Mers El Kébir erasure. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/707010...

Timehop just reminded me of how the kids’ French school last year announced that there were lice in the classroom

I was at an airport bar in Charleston coming back from a work trip when he was convicted in 2024, I think a setting like that, surrounded by supporters of his expensive golf shirts, would be pretty ideal (bonus points because I’m on way home in this scenario and not stuck with them)

Update on 7YO’s current music obsession: “Hips Don’t Lie” goes hard, going on the list of kid song obsessions that I like, along with “A.P.T.,” “Pink Pony Club,” all of K-Pop Demon Hunters, and @themountaingoats.bsky.social “Woke Up New,” if you can believe it

What’s fun when you look up the history of the Citadel is that it not only was (of course) very involved in the Confederate war effort, even before that it had its origins in white South Carolina’s fear of slave revolts. So boy does all this check out!

As a 38 year old parent of two kids, I've discovered pretty much no new non-kid music since I turned 30. It's pretty much just Waxahatchee, but damned if she's not so good that it doesn't really matter. www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL3i...

The wildlife vibe on my run this morning was “vaguely ominous”

If I ever ran for office I would be way too eager to show people my tattoo of my kids’ birthdates in the French revolutionary calendar, and then talk about the Jacobins. I would get single digits in a primary.

Song picks on the bike ride today: Almost 5YO: “ABCs” by Cocomelon 7YO: “Hips Don’t Lie” by Shakira Dad: “Unbelievers” by Vampire Weekend We contain multitudes

NYTimes about to be running so many stories at boat-up restaurants with gas pumps up north, asking thrice-divorced rich guys from the Twin Cites, MKE, and Chi exurbs what they think of the price of ski boat gas

Artemis x Poseidon crossover event

Will the unification of the Greens and Blues into one faction to demand the end of unpopular taxation measures and possibly the deposition of Justinian help the Constantinopolitan wine shop industry kick its slump?

During the scene where he has a Russian passport my wife said “ok but Matt Damon has an extremely American face” and that is absolutely correct

Brian Cox is so fun in this

We’re watching “Bourne Supremacy” because we’re going to Naples next month, and I googled “action movies with scenes in Naples.” And: “unnecessarily globetrotting, professionally made action movies” is such a great genre. Bonus points for a typewriter effect telling me where we are.

Thinking about my late Obama era Hamilton obsession 10 years into the Age of Trump

Saturday’s grill project: Grilled eggplant slices stuffed with ricotta, raisins, Calabrian chilies, and breadcrumbs, then baked with a marinara sauce. Also grilled tomato bruschetta

Old man parenting take! It is wild to me how many people don’t teach their kids to say please and thank you

Q: and this is a very special one, James. When you press the button on the dashboard it starts playing Andrew Tate videos. Bond: sick innit

The used book about the Greek colonies of southern Italy that I bought has a postcard from a Dutch Atomic and Molecular Physics research center. Who says STEM and humanities can’t work together

This LearnedLeague season so far I’m 6th in total correct answers and 23rd in the table, because I apparently lost my ability to assign points in a freak points assigning accident

Grilled ribeye, pan con tomate, and gazpacho I made this morning, happy summer people

Work is done, kids are in bed, and we’ve reached Friday grill and chill time

Wow, the Italian Nazi collaborator got kicked to the curb because his allies didn't think he was providing enough value to the overall fascist project, where have I heard that before

Song of the day, courtesy of @themountaingoats.bsky.social, because "Let all the trash rain down From way up in the rafters I'm walking out of here in one piece Don't care what comes after" is good Friday messaging for an immigration lawyer in Trump 2.0 www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWGe...

Cont: mowing the lawn in the evening with my silly hat and a Civil War audiobook (www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/557203..., big fan)

We're going to Italy next month to celebrate our 10th anniversary and this is 100% true, instead of our flight from Chicago to Naples, we'll do the Des Moines to Naples route instead. No sweat.

*John Lennon voice* God is a concept by which these creeps melt their brain I'll say it again God is a concept by which these creeps melt their brain

“Ken Paxton was Attorney General during Uvalde and Camp Mystic. He let a child sex abuser out of prison because he’s a Republican. They can spew all the transphobic lies they want but it’s clear who’s fine with dead and mutilated Texas kids.” There I wrote the ad

Thanks to @erikloomis.bsky.social I now know that Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society, is buried in the same cemetery as much of the literary, academic, cultural, and politic elite of Boston and Cambridge, which I find extremely funny.

I guess they now serve Turkish food here

Hmm, not sure about that one, NYTimes books

Top Chef and pastis in the sunroom while a storm rolls in. We’re back, summerheads. The reign of the “I prefer cold weather” tyrants is at an end

From home: the bike trails around the lakes and river in Minneapolis From adopted home: fried cheese curds

Is a coffee cowboy a cowboy who likes coffee or a guy on a horse roaming the wide open planes herding coffee beans to market?

This is like GRRM but for real nerds (me)

I’ve always loved “Casablanca,” but since I married and had kids with someone whose Jewish and Marxist family escaped France in 1940 through Lisbon, the Marseillaise scene absolutely wrecks me every time.

One of my favorite “Confederates were losers” factoids is that diehards in 1865 developed a plan to go to Mexico and work with “Emperor” Maximilian to restore the CSA. Buddy that’s an open-faced loser sandwich.

I recently learned that Abercrombie makes nice linen camp collar shirts, so I still do wear some clothes from a similar company, albeit very different clothes

(Cont)* *way less cool because ocean. Also windy.

I’m driving around Jacksonville a bit after my work thing in an effort to see 1) the ocean and 2) an alligator, and I found myself on the Jimmy Buffett Memorial Highway. That’s good Floridaing right there.

Once again, I’m consistent enough in my extremely unrestricted beliefs about immigration to believe that white South Africans should get to live wherever they want, like everybody else. But this is just a gratuitously racist insult given everything else that’s going on in immigration.

Love to be in Florida before 9 AM, great stuff

Left the kids and spouse after an absolutely lovely long weekend to go to Jacksonville of all damn places for a one night work trip. Listening to @themountaingoats.bsky.social’s “Tallahassee” and finishing my reread of “My Brilliant Friend” on the plane, just to complete the sad vibes

Robert Harris’ “Pompei” is great dorky historical fiction. The criticism is that it takes something whose end everybody reading it knows, and shoehorns a half baked plot in as an excuse to talk about Roman engineering for a few hundred pages. To which I say hell yeah it does.

We’re staying at a house with an attached sheep farm and they come out and greet you when go outside

This sort of thing is one of the best parts about this country and anyone who doesn’t agree is my enemy

Guy Fieri could turn Waterloo into a coconut lime cooler but Napoleon could never go to Flavortown

The paradox of being almost 40 at the theme park: I can absolutely kill on the bumper cars now but it hurts my back