TIL Elizabeth I was considering teaming up with the Sultan to fight Catholic Spain, and argued that Islam and Anglicanism were closer to each other than Anglicanism was to Catholicism.

when I was teaching English in Thailand in the 90s I came across a book in the school library that had 2-3 sentence summaries of stories -- from literature and also folklore and mythology. it had an academic perspective but was mostly the summaries. does anybody know what it could have been?

"This is the end of it, you see. He frightened every one away from him when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead. Ha, ha, ha!"  "Spirit. I see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way, now. Merciful Heaven, what is this?” #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

"If you demand accountability for pedophiles --we will shame and punish Bill Clinton!" "That is totally fine. We view him as an employee not as a god emperor. Our self-image and self-worth are in no way tied up with our views of the personal morality of Bill Clinton." "Whoa..huh..sounds kinda nice"

bravura is better than bravado, but if you don't have at least a little bravado, you never get to be bravura

"Every day in every way I am getting fuzzier and fuzzier."

ICYMI: I wrote about an unsettling Barry N. Malzberg novel from the 1970s about a troubled ex-president for Zona Motel. zonamotel.substack.com/p/review-by-...

one of the best interviews with a writer I have come across open.substack.com/pub/zonamote...

And if we won, we can win again. Doomerism is an excuse to do nothing, to stay on your couch and behind your screen, bemoaning how little power you have because you are on your coach and behind your screen saying we're doomed. It's a loop. We all should break it.

He has loosed the fateful lightning of his Pretty Good Swift Sword

poor Oliver Sacks!

a bookshop recently advertised Speculative Whiteness as a stocking stuffer. it's true that it is quite small. it's also a quick read for someone who wants to round out this year's reading challenge.

🎵Last Christmas, I gave you a dog The very next day, the dog ran away, We put up some signs, and I'm happy to say That dog came back by New Year's!🎵

werewolf? here wolf!

New deck of cards

how come when Europe came into contact with the pre-Columbian civilizations of North and South America the Indians were devastated by diseases brought from Europe that they had no resistance to, but not vice versa?

A new project to digitize the complete works of Rudolf Carnap will be getting underway...

What does a Jewess use to kindle an oil lamp? Jew-Wesson!

a role model

Andor has Jar Jar?

What is the history of the "I've heard of X but this is ridiculous" joke formation? It was popular in my youth although never funny. Where did it come from? Where did it go?

last Christmas I gave you a dog The very next day, the dog ran away We put up signs and I'm happy to say We found that dog by new year's!

how much anodyne pablum should be part of a healthy information diet? what's the RDA?

I remember the Sunday before the primary he stood on the corner of Washington and Eastern Parkway, by the Museum, just looking to shake hands and listen to what folks had to say.

Trump’s foreign policy isn’t “noninterventionism,” it is a kind of neo neo conservatism devoted to imposing authoritarian ethnonationalism abroad instead of democracy (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

miracles give testimony to everyone that the world is in a constant state of renewal and that which is recognizable in the lower world also makes an impression in the upper world. And also, the upper world is in a constant state of joy in the very notion of renewal. - Nachmanides (h/t Shaul Magid)

What is revealed more generally on Hanukkah is the very notion of miracle itself, suggesting that the world is never in a state of stasis but in a perpetual state of renewal. - Shaul Magid

Chanukah oh Chanukah Let's re-watch Anora Let's go to Alaska And watch the Aurora.

"I'd like to solve the puzzle." "Go ahead." "What is a Yiddish Chiddush?" BELLS RING, AUDIENCE APPLAUDS WILDLY.

Take that, murder hornets! www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/s...

it's a little bit exhausting, no to look at greet grass and try and stop yourself from thinking that it is green?

from religion to gorilla-gion

From the Kenoma to the Pleroma and Back Again in 0 Easy Steps

was there PTSD in the Stone Age?

[my life]

you do not need to sleep in a large space. once you are asleep your mind/consciousness/soul are sojourning in an infinite dreamland. nobody really needs more space to sleep than a capsule hotel. the extra space we are currently squandering can be re-wilded.

if the x-seed 4000 had the density of a capsule hotel, how many people could live in it? I feel maybe 40 million or so? I think maybe the human race should live like that, and let the rest of the planet re-wild, with some bike paths and nice parks, botanic gardens etc.

haven't we met-- at Coronet?

Message to a Dumb Planet

"Do you loathe the uninitiate mob and push them away from you?" "Nah, some of them are pretty cool. They welcome to hang out." -Horace's less famous friend whom we don't know about because he never created a monument more lasting than bronze, but was happier than Horace and more fun to be around.

has anybody written a leftist critique of the attention economy? EG celebrities pose the same problem as billionaires -- they are hoarders of attention?

We praise that Sankara who is the source of the power of the wheel of energies by whose expansion and contraction the universe is absorbed and comes into being.

Audience much amused by shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away with a helicopter after him. first you saw him wallowing along in the water like a porpoise, then you saw him through the helicopters gunsights, then he was full of holes --1984

"If Cleopatra's nose had been longer by 18 inches she would have been an elephant." - Pascal's less insightful brother

How can he who is flame be eaten by fire?

unpopular opinion: there are too many books on "Sanskrit philosophy" and too few original texts in translation, because loose thinking is easier than facing the challenge of translating a whole text. #philsky #Philosophy