Books Worth Reading

Don’t write off blue collar work because you’re smart. Eric Hoffer was a philosopher who spent most of his life doing manual labor as a fruit packer and longshoreman, before ending his career as a professor at Berkeley with several best selling books to his name. Continued —>

@LaInaMinute Horrible airport, horrible shuttle and facility. 0 of 5 stars.

The largest parking lot in L.A. is also the largest concrete structure in the U.S. outside of the Pentagon. This is the new LAX Consolidated Rent-a-Car facility. Let’s get into it!

The George Peabody Library at Johns Hopkins

Footfalls echo in the memory down the passage we did not take towards the door we never opened into the rose garden. ― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

I’m not very active on Twitter anymore, but I’m writing up a storm on Substack. Would love to see some of you over there. Link in comments.

PLUS: 2 great book recomendations booksworthreading.beehiiv.com/p/i-m-going-to… via @worthwhilebooks

When I was a student, spending the day on technical literature, I made it a habit to read for 45-60 minutes at night to get my mind off things. I read Anna Karenina this way. Magic Mountain. Brothers Karamazov. Sleepwalkers (Broch - not enough people know this one). Later working I kept this up as far as I could. Kundera came in. I read War and Peace mostly on the Subway. Houellebecq. It can be a therapeutic thing. You disengage from the day to day - which can be very unpleasant - and let someone smarter than you inhabit your mind. And that will make you smarter. And happier probably.

More people would read poetry if it was still written like this.

Down in the withered grasses something stirred 
I thought it was his footfall that I heard.
Then a grasshopper chirred I climbed the hill just as the new moon showed, I saw him coming on the southern road. My heart lays down its load. - the Shi King

@L0m3z Solzhenitsyn speaks of the submission of victims thus: “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking…We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

As this was happening it was made very explicit what was going on. Some exceptions were made if you were gay, otherwise "no more white guys." No one tried to hide this. I knew a lot of people in film/tv writing at the time. Hollywood was perhaps even worse than academia. Even worse than publishing, which was already in decline for other complicated reasons. People lost jobs. Were effectively blacklisted. Projects cancelled. Mostly, though, just never hired to begin with. Many who had snuck in just under the wire kept their heads down. Kept quiet. Even as their own career advancement was permanently derailed. Others who got the axe mostly shrugged their shoulders. Many, if a feeling a bit personally scorned, supported the new politics of the age. Lots of self-deprecating resignation. "The industry needs a break from straight white men." I heard this from a guy whose TV show had just been dropped. He'd made a few hundred grand on the option for his book. Went back to teaching. A fine life. What was there to complain about? Few became politically radicalized. It's a mistake to think this. I didn't see that happen once. Some of us were already on the right and stayed there. Some would eventually come around, but not until years later, not until 2020. Not until COVID and BLM hysteria pushed them over the edge and gave them social permission to be angry for what happened. The prevailing response in the moment was shame. Say nothing. Don't acknowledge it. Don't dwell on it. Don't ever admit you got screwed. That would be too self indulgent. It would admit to a much larger set of problems you might then be obligated to do something about. I understand this. Complaining about this sort of thing brings no sympathy and only points to your own helplessness. So many talented people just got washed out. Found corporate gigs or went into tech, far away from the creative industries. Hard to measure the fallout or what was lost. Maybe not much. Or maybe only delayed. True creativity, true talent eventually finds its own path. There's no reason to be forlorn about this. I don't believe in any "lost generation" sob story. In the end, I sincerely believe this will turn out to be good on balance. It will force new institutions to rise in place of the old one that failed so catastrophically. It will have a cleansing effect on a culture that had long become overgrown. But a good deal of anger is warranted. These people deserve to be crushed, the people who architected these decisions and the people who passively allowed them to take effect. No mercy for them.

@MZHemingway Whoever wrote this has never had friends

This is so obviously a joke and busting chops and anyone who would describe it as tension is being willfully disingenuous or is an idiot.

@avidseries No that’s fine.

@avidseries With hootsuite and buffer, I’m super efficient at posting. Replies, graphics and engagement farming would be the most time committment, but honestly, if I’m having fun I’ll have no problem spending way too much time on this.

“There is nothing truer than physiognomy, taken in connection with manner.” Charles Dickens

Happy to the great Patrick Buchanan. He was America First right from the start.