"I am quite certain that neither love nor grief can ever be excessive; each is its own absolute measure, and knows its own proper proportions. And, as a rule, we generally fail to love or grieve nearly as much as we ought to do." ~David Bentley Hart

I don't know much about Brazil, but it's pretty metal that the guy who was indicted by his political enemies, stood trial, and spent two years prison has now twice beat guys who, when faced with a similar fate, fled the country.

I sometimes see people use the word "normies" to describe someone who isn't online basically all day long, following social media trends. This is no longer correct, though. "Normies" are online all day. This is what most people do, now.

Hot-take, maybe: I think collapsing birthrates signal a refreshed apocalyptic fervor that may be good for our spiritual consciousness insofar as its animating motivations crowd out the "techno-optimism" that undergirded the 20th-century "Baby Boom." Of course, many posit a prevailing and self-destructive nihilism to explain this dereliction of our human "duty" to reproduce. Also contraception and "looser" sexual mores. These explanations probably aren't altogether wrong. But insofar as there's some element of genuine present-orientedness – even some urgency – in one's decision to seek a fulfilling life without bearing children, do we not move closer (even if inadvertently) the purview St. Paul endorses in I Corinthians? "...in view of the impending distress it is well for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek marriage ... those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that. I mean, brethren, the appointed time has grown very short; from now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none ... For the form of this world is passing away."

Lots of people are missing the point of this. Yes, it can be used for scams. But so can lots of other AI tools. These guys made a true speech-to-speech model trained on nothing but human vocal conversation. That's pretty amazing!

Even if GOP keeps the Senate, this is getting into pyrrhic victory territory. $400M from one guy to prop up the most unpopular POTUS in a century? At best to hobble over the finish line with a 51/49 majority and House gone? Trump will be as unpopular on Nov 4 as on Nov 2, no matter what happens. $400M for two years of lame duck nothing, and probably to make 2028 even harder.

I say it every two years: Early voting is an epic disaster waiting to happen. Nobody should be voting in any election 2-3 weeks before votes are counted. One day, a candidate will die or do something scandalous after millions have already voted, and all of his/her voters will want their vote back. Whether they get it or not, the resulting outcome will not be acceptable to the ultimate loser. Chaos will ensue. Just a terrible idea, all around.

He's right, for better or worse.

Right now on @Kalshi, David Jolly has a better chance of winning than Vivek Ramaswamy 🤯

This is truly incredible.

When did everyone start wearing sneakers with suits? Did I miss the memo that we were all going to start looking uglier?

Jay-Z Super Bowl. Julia Stiles DWTS. Obama back on the campaign trail. Millennials rising 💪

"Anti-" is a relation. You can't know "anti-Christ" unless you know "Christ." The deeper you dive into just one side of that equation, the more wrong you're likely to be. Thiel (allegedly) knows anti-Christ. Does Thiel know Christ? He should consider lecturing on that, next.

This is the galling contradiction in so much of the history of Christendom, with all its glories and all its atrocities, and probably explains its unique distinction as the one 'religious' civilization that destroyed itself from within, not only by abandoning its faith's inmost imperatives, but also by obeying them even when their rationales had been lost. It may be the case that Christianity can create a civilization, but can never comfortably inhabit one. It is always instead establishing the conditions of its own exile, founding the Ur of the Chaldees from which it will eventually have to depart. Historically it has always been its own crisis, its own cataclysm. No sooner does the faith complete what it has built than the old familiar ache returns, because this enduring city is still not yet Christ, still not yet the Kingdom, even if the 'Christian Nationalist' or 'Integralist' insists on proclaiming ‘here it is’ or 'there it is'; this is just the old lie once again that obscures the truth that 'the Kingdom of God is inside of you' (Luke 17:21) and that it arrives on earth unheralded, always 'like a thief in the night' (Matthew 24:43-44; 1 Thessalonians 5:2). This is why 'Christian' identitarians will always turn out to be heathens in the end. There is nothing intrinsically wrong in heathenism, of course; I am half a heathen myself on my better days; but, for Christians, if the original gospel is true at all, there is a love much higher than – and irreconcilable with – the love of blood and the will of the flesh. ~David Bentley Hart, "They Have Taken Away My Lord, and I Know Not Where They Have Laid Him"

I mean, it's hard to argue with this. My only quibble is that there is no "course correction" possible. Humanity is presently consumed by "social tech." This is only just begun, and will take many decades to wear off – only after the "cultural flattening" runs out of targets.

Vance sees only one cause behind every problem – "mass migration." He has a simplistic and historically illiterate outlook on the world, no doubt having at least something to do with his youth and lack of real-world experience. (Trump, to his credit, is not like this.) Thankfully, very few Americans shares this perspective.

I feel this. Putting abstract ideas into words (even if only as part of an "inner monologue") means you're reifying these abstract things, making them less "pure" than they would otherwise be. Isn't it better to leave things unspoken in their unspoken form, rather than force them into the English language in order to deal with them? Not everything requires words in order to understand or engage with them *in your own head.* Plotinus: "One must not suppose that the gods ... contemplate propositions, but all the forms we speak about are beautiful images in that world, of the kind that someone imagined to exist in the soul of the wise man, images not painted but real."