Notes and a word

Joseph Moore:

I think genius is as common as dirt, but needs proper conditions to flower. I think this because of the recurring historical phenomenon of little nothing cities or cultures reaching insane flowerings over short periods of time with small populations – how does one explain Athens or Florence? The density of true genius over a few centuries or even a few decades in those places surpasses the genius of, say, the entire Islamic world over a millennium. Genius has to be lurking, and thwarted, everywhere.

Altitude Zero:

The more levelheaded ones, like Obama and Biden (back when he was more or less sentient) and Hillary most certainly want power for power’s sake, but that’s not true of the Antifa types, and the Junior Volunteer Thought Police, and the BLM types. I mean, look at these people; they are, almost to a man (or woman) stunningly ugly, obviously mentally ill, or twisted in some odd sexual way. These are the people who were made fun of,who didn’t get asked to the prom, who never had a date in their lives, who got locked up for being a bit too friendly with the kiddies, or with the sheep…

These people want revenge, not just on the normal, well adjusted people they had no hope of being, but on the Universe itself. Edmund Wilson, himself a leftist, noted uneasily that almost everyone he met at his first Communist Party meeting was ugly or deformed in some way. Things haven’t changed, it seems.

Moore, again:

In the fevered imaginations of the Left, the Spanish Inquisition looms large. Yet, over its whole centuries long existence, the Inquisition didn’t kill or torture as many people as Pol Pot, Mao, or Stalin did in a routine day. And that was centuries ago. Unless we want to consider Communism and its conjoined twin National Socialism as religions – I would be down with that – religious persecutions in the West are ancient, comparatively minor (e.g., Salem witch trials), or both.

Today’s useful term: FAUXVID.

Notes from all over

Here’s a motive for one of great crimes of the 21st century:

Wealth increase in the pandemic for founder/CEOs of
Amazon: $91 billion
Walmart: $38B
Google: $37B
Microsoft: $33B
Facebook: $28B
Nike: $8B
Apple: $8B

Small businesses: collectively lost over $200 billion

We’re witnessing a record wealth transfer

Amazon: profit up 100%
Walmart: profit up 80%
Target: profit up 80%
Lowe’s: profit up 74%
Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Google: stock at record high

Small businesses: 21% closed; revenue for rest down 30%. They’re gonna go extinct in the lockdown without help.

(Via Clarissa.)

Continue reading “Notes from all over”

Trapped in an alternate universe

We’ve been living in a counterfactual world since at least 1960. Nixon won the election, but in our space-time continuum, Kennedy was inaugurated president. It looks like we’re at another inflection point. So, what now?

Francis X. Maier:

What may be coming our way is an odd kind of “new colonialism,” with flyover country—that Dark Continent formerly known as places like Kansas, Alabama, and Tennessee, largely inhabited by reactionary troglodytes—reduced in effective power to mission territory for our enlightened coastal elites; who, after all, are much smarter than the rest of us and have the expert skills to run our complex technocracy.

And of course, they’ll do all this unselfishly, heroically really, for the benefit of us natives.

Severian:

What’s going to come of the electoral mess? Nothing good, as we’ve discussed ad nauseam. The likely outcomes — the ones produced by humans, excluding meteor strikes and plagues and other acts of God — range from “bad” to “inconceivably horrible.” There really aren’t any Forces of History, my friends, but something out there wants what it wants, and what it wants, apparently, is rat utopia, the kinder gentler police state, Karen uber alles. Even the increasingly unlikely event of a total Trump victory in the courts only delays it a few years, tops. We all know which way the world is heading.

So… what do we, as individuals, DO?

Tend your gardens. Raise your children. Be loyal to your friends. Pray. Meditate. Read the great books, view the great artworks while that’s still permitted. Enjoy your time in the sunshine, because that’s all any of us ever really get in this world. Amor fati.

See also Edward Feser.

Survivor

December arrived last week and wiped out most of the garden outside. The weather has since reverted back to October, and it turned out that the cold and snow barely touched the California poppies. They started blooming back in the middle of May, over five months ago. After their big display in May and June, and unlike the rest of the hardy annuals which faded out in the summer heat, they kept going and have always had a few blossoms open. Not even the snow and ice a week ago stopped them. There’s mild fall weather scheduled for the rest of the week, so there should be color for a little while yet.

Ancient noises

Here’s another hit tune, this time a gymel from the thirteenth century, “Edi Beo Thu, Hevene Quene,” in a thoroughly historically-uninformed arrangement. All the sounds are u-he’s Hive.

The original sounded something like this:

“Edi Beo Thu” was originally a vocal piece. It might be interesting to hear how a pair of Mikus handle Middle English, but I expect that the results would be unintelligible.