That word "proximity" means "proximate, next, or very near (as in time, place, relationship) : immediate or close propinquity," or, in a word, closeness. When you find the word "close" in propinquity to "proximity," be a love and rip it out.

Dispensational premillennialism is evidence that the Fathers blundered when they voted Revelation into the canon.

Rich people saw before Covid that climate change would kill billions. They're following the idiotic "Don't Look Up" playbook ever since: they think pushing as many poors as possible off a cliff while building their bunkers will save them. That's wrong. Only cooperation could (have) worked.

You liked the idea of the You Didn't Read the Book Club. Now you can set one up.

If you can’t bring yourself to boycott Disney, at least don’t post about your trips on social media. You no longer have the choice of being apolitical. Being neutral in the face of fascism is collaboration. I’m sorry that it was ruined for you, but it was ruined.

I overlooked that yesterday was Samuel Johnson's birthday. Let's remember one of the most concise and durable of his observations: "We are more pained by ignorance, than delighted by instruction."

It is the job of the Democratic party to sell and defend the policies that most Democratic voters want, not to present a candidate slate that is palatable to moderate Republicans who might switch if they hate their own candidate enough.

crazy to see the "Rainbow Coalition" party come to this. Vocally and Publicly blaming their own voters and grassroots organizers rather than admit their centrist strategies are failing, and have been failing bscl since Clinton left office.

Sunny, breezy, and mild, but mark it: the rattle of dead leaves in the street.

Yes, you should be skeptical. You could use a checklist.

Maybe not release the hounds.

I have in mind to form a You Didn’t Read the Book club. Membership limited to English majors, who are not permitted to confess to not having read a book in the canon. It will be an evening of bluffing, exaggerated by drink.

RFK Jr. rolled out that old chestnut again about how healthy Americans were in the 60’s, so here’s a fact check. In 1965: -42% of American adults smoked; it’s 11% now. -The infant morality rate was 24.7/1000; it’s 5.6/1000 now. -Overall life expectancy was 70 years; it's about 77 years now.

Can you also name a discovery?

What the Cracker Barrel furor is about.

For Throwback Thursday, some posts you may have missed.

People still read books?

If you have watched the excellent Australian comedy “Fisk,” be cheered to know that a third season is to drop on Netflix later this month. And if you do not know it (poor you), there are only six episodes in a season and you have ample time to catch up on the first two.

A colleague with whom I was discussing the traditional hostility of reporters toward copy editors offered this succinct advice: Don't bite the hand that saves your ass.

In English, just shut up. Link in comments.

Vacationing last week at the Wisconsin Dells, I spotted a fellow tourist wearing a T-shirt with this text. I recommend that you acquire one to wear to staff meetings. Just pretend that I'm not here. That's what I'm doing.

I am telling you, good people, if you are at the bar of a large conference hotel, order straight liquor, because if you order anything more complicated (and I include a martini) than straight liquor, there is no telling what you might get.

POLITICO compiled a list of all the Washington Post staffers who have left in the past eight months. It’s at least a hundred names, many of them among the biggest names in journalism. This is the fastest erosion of a major outlet ever.

In Mitteleuropa.

First, the papadam.

I wonder: If what appears to be Baltimore County Executive Kathy Klausmeier's attempt to deny reappointment to Inspector General Kelly Madigan succeeds, will any successor to Madigan be perceived as a stooge to political interests in the county?

On this day in 1925, one century ago, John T. Scopes was convicted of the crime of teaching evolutionary theory in the public schools. That was in Dayton, Tennessee, the kind of state in which, H.L. Mencken said, "Genesis had the police behind it."

This old gray head.

What I feel about Gavin Newsom doing performative transphobia to win the Center is the same way I felt about leftists doing performative misogyny to win over the mythical White Working-Class Man: If you have to become your enemy in order to win, then your enemy always wins.

Note the date. www.youtube.com/watch?app=de...

"The interesting thing about correct usage is that it manages to be democratic and elitist at the same time. ... The rules apply to everybody. On the other hand, knowing what's correct is one of the signs of a superior education." Louis Menand, in an essay on The New Yorker

Snark on the copy desk, you say?

Sitting on the porch, watching another storm roll in.

Today's post is sentimental, perhaps maudlin, so you may choose to give it a miss.

If you could help me, I saw online the other day this perfectly expressed sentiment but did not mark the source or author. This is how I remember it: The American left is gauche but not sinister.

I would buy roughly a dozen of these to give as gifts.

Chilling a bottle of Prosecco so that later today we can raise a toast to the republic we had for 249 years.

Kal is Out at The Sun open.substack.com/pub/kaltoons...

Miss Massie is tired of your nonsense.

You've got to be carefully taught.

Happy to adapt Nabokov’s swipe at the Greek Catholic Church to Anglicanism, “that mild communion whose demands on one’s conscience are so small in comparison with the comforts it offers.”

It’s too damn hot to leave the house, so I am going to cosset myself by staying home and rereading Nabocov’s “Pnin.”

Yesterday on my blog I posted "Advantages of life as a copy editor." Today a decent respect for the truth requires me to point out that it was an exercise in nostalgia. Virtually none of those newspaper copy desks still exist.

I wrote about the advantages of work as a copy editor. (Yes, there are some.) Did I leave anything out?

When did "I'm afraid to ride the subway" become a thing that Manly Men say and not a sign that someone is a giant baby unfit for adult life

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

Four years in retirement from The Baltimore Sun, three and a half years as a freelance copy editor at The Baltimore Banner.

When I die I’d like the @nytimes.com editorial board to lower me into my grave so I can be let down one last time.