Alan Jacobs

I keep trying to do the Todd Hido thing but it’s a lot harder than it looks.

Jonah Goldberg: “You want to know what I think will happen if Republicans have a really good night on Tuesday? Not much.” 

Jonah is correct. Even if the Republicans win both houses of Congress, they won’t have a veto-proof majority. Because the current GOP is purely performative and legislatively incompetent, they’ll put on some off-Broadway theater — e.g. an attempted impeachment of President Biden — that will be mildly entertaining to some but ineffectual. Fecklessness and gridlock will continue to rule the Nation’s Capital. People need to calm down. 

Struggles to deal with being in the shadow of his more famous brother Bub.

So our magnificent local Balcones Distillery has been purchased by a behemoth corporation. When a great local business gets taken over by people who say things like “This acquisition is in line with our strategy to acquire high-growth brands in fast-growing segments,” that can’t possibly be good news.

Lev Tolstoy, born in 1828, had a daughter who lived until 1979.

Milton, Angels, Mortals: a Story Idea | by Adam Roberts: This will be a very busy day, so I don’t have time to engage with this as fully as I desperately want to do, so consider this a bookmark, and these as first thoughts: 

• In this scenario, angels are bitcoin and people are money. 
• The angels/humans relationship looks a good bit like that of Elves and Men in Tolkien’s legendarium, except that Elves do have children (just not many of them). 
• Maybe in light of that one element of this history would be the fallen angels trying to figure out how to have children. Would they pursue this technologically? Or would they, like the people in The Children of Men, make do with surrogates? 
• Adam envisions the faithful angels remaining in Heaven with God, but why would they do that? If in the orthodox Christian understanding (faithful) angels are among us, why wouldn’t they be in Adam’s imagined world? 

More … eventually. 

So much fantastic stuff in Sara Hendren’s new newsletter!

It’s morning in America!