A Death in the Parallel Economy

Today’s “research activity” involved the murder of a man at the gym Steph and I used to belong to.  Around 8pm a couple days ago a guy was shot and killed right down the street.  This feels too close to home, literally.  He was playing basketball on the court that I’d played on before and suddenly there were six gunshots. A friend of his later posted, “n-ggas can’t even hoop”. 

The 23-year old victim lived a parallel life to mine that is utterly foreign. He was a gang member relocated from a tiny town in Mississippi, population 1,200. He went to high school nearby and brought his girlfriend up from there and had a child here. 

The pressure of providing for his new family apparently involved taking risks for money.  He also reposted a meme last fall that went: “Not in ICU, Not in Jail, Not in the Grave, Just Take a Single Moment to thank God”. He had 4,500 friends on Facebook and said: “I want my whole gang rich ! Not just me”. 

On 3/2/23 he was arrested here and charged with improper handling of firearms in a motor vehicle and possession of drugs.

There's no telling if it was gang related or not. It could've been simply an argument on the bball court that escalated. Wrong place, wrong time. The police, 48 hours later, don't appear to have many leads other than a very shadowy images of hooded figures on the court. Despite presumably many eyewitnesses involving a game of five on five. 

Regardless, there’s this underground economy that most of us never see, the drug economy and gang town. They operate within our city and under our noses and come from remote places like farm towns in Mississippi. 

It’s sad and perhaps the predictable outgrowth of a black culture that mostly refuses to participate in the higher education racket and then finds no real jobs as a result. A local former school board member had this to say the other day: 

“Over my years on the School Board and as a volunteer in Franklinton, it's become clear to me that the success a kid has in school is directly related to the environment the kid is raised in.

What level of education do the parents have? Do the parents read to their kids? At one Franklinton elementary school where I volunteered the principal told us that less than half the students had parents who had graduated from high school. Those parents were typically poor readers, had few if any books in the home, and never read to their kids when they were little. Those kids go to school in a neighborhood where this lack of early childhood development is a constant across nearly all homes. Consequently the academic performance of those kids is poor, and it's not the fault of the teachers or the amount of funding.

And the consequence is another generation of kids who don't read well, struggle with everything in school, drop out early, and end up in poverty.

I'm sure we could have plenty of arguments about how things got that way. There is a racial component, but note that in Franklinton in particular, there are nearly equal percentages of Black and White kids in poverty, both generally descendants of folks who migrated to Columbus from Appalachia and the Deep South to work in the factories, which they could do with little or no education. Today those factories are gone, but the culture is still there. This is a far from simple problem to fix.”

A Hero in Civil Liberties Movement

Good thoughts from a hero (Matt Braynard) in the civil liberties movement: 

"This morning I got a message from a long-time supporter of Look Ahead America who was disheartened by the continued over-prosecution and unfair treatment of peaceful January 6th protestors and disappointed in Look Ahead America for not being able to do more, and I wanted to share my response: 

//

I share your disappointment that we aren't able to do more. Please understand: 

Look Ahead America did not exist on January 6th, 2021.

Despite that, we've led the fight for Justice for J6 this way:

Held 70 rallies and vigils to successfully reshape public opinion about the events of that day and what followed. This was a measurable shift.

Built the most comprehensive database of the political prisoners, including data on how donors could support them. (https://LookAheadAmerica.org/J6)

Developed and produced the only podcast in existence that lets these prisoners share their side of the story. (https://open.spotify.com/show/0TNr36CemhfqMBW6Ez1Ftg) 

Led our activists to have hundreds of conversations with their elected officials and canddiates the political persecutions.

Created a jobs program that has helped connect convicted J6ers to employers willing to give them a chance. (https://LookAheadAmerica.org/JobsforJ6) 

We did this with a few thousand dollars, less than 100k.

We are not the ACLU, which has been around for a hundred years and has a powerful legal team and an annual budget of $300 million. If we did, we would have been able to organize legal defenses for all of these people, centralized it, and probably gotten most of them off, along with bringing suits against the federal government.

We need supporters and donors who can be patient with us as we grow and develop into something that can more capably handle a situation like this. It isn't going to happen overnight, and I'm in this for the long haul.

//

I ask for your continued help for our organization. Your contributions are tax deductible, not publicly disclosed, and we don't share your donor data with anyone: https://LookAheadAmerica.org/donate. 

--Matt Braynard "

Does the Decline of America Track the Decline of the Dollar?

I’m always interested in borders, even shadowy ones like when exactly our society started to decline.

I recently saw a graph of the decline of the silver content in the money of Rome and it seemed a reasonable proxy for their own decline. As the value of the money went down, Rome started to fail and eventually spectacularly. 

From a post online:

“The history of banking is in many ways the history of this dilution—as governments soon discovered that through mere legislation they could declare that everyone within their borders had to accept that this year’s coins were equal to last year’s coins, even if the new coins had less silver and more lead...In Imperial Rome, this currency-degradation, which today might be described as a ‘financial innovation,’ would go on to finance previously-unaffordable policies and forever wars, leading eventually to the Crisis of the Third Century and Diocletian’s Edict on Maximum Prices.” 

So I thought about how I could describe the economic and moral decline of the U.S. with the decline of the dollar.  

A book on the midwest says that “Peak Midwest” (meaning greatest political influence and economic success within the U.S.) seems to be roughly from 1865 to 1917, which coincided (coincidentally or not) with peak midwestern values in America, i.e. thrift, work ethic, religious sensibilities. The 1920s and beyond brought Hollywood values and the east and west coasts became much more powerful relative to the midwest. 

Looking purely at the dollar and inflation (also known as Roman currency degradation) I divided the epochs into 25 years and what the American dollar was worth at the beginning of the period (i.e. $1) and what it ended up at:

1800-1825: .67

1825-1850: .74

1850-1875: 1.32

1875-1900: .76

1900-1925: 2.11

1925-1950: 1.37

1950-1975: 2.24

1975-2000: 3.2

2000-2023: 1.76  (so far! 2 years to go…)

So a dude from outer space, looking at no other data, might say that America was rising from 1800-1850 (dollar was worth more after those years), had some sort of inflationary trouble from 1850-1875 (the Civil War), was very strong again from 1875 to 1900, had some sort of inflationary trouble from 1900-1925 (WW I) and has been declining (in the Roman sense of currency debasement) ever since with an especially rapid decline between 1975 and 2000. 

Even if it doesn’t describe things in term of economic or political power, it seems coincidentally reasonable in terms of morality of America.

But in actuality it’s probably just an indicator of our war focus. We became extremely warlike in the 20th century, didn’t stand down our armies for first time in our history after WW2, and began extending our empire with lots of forever wars and defending far-flung outposts. That naturally would lead to inflation. 

Quote O'Rama

From a novel:

"Was their island beautiful? They couldn’t say. It was the only home they’d ever known. Standards of beauty - like those of truth, or justice - are arrived at by the practice of making comparisons." 

**

This meditation, written about 25 years ago about Ezekiel, fits well today (from "The Message" bible):

"Among biblical writers, Ezekiel is our master at dealing with catas-trophe. When catastrophe struck - it was the sixth-century B.C. invasion of Israel by Babylon - denial was the primary response. Ezekiel found himself living among a people of God who (astonishingly similar to us!) stubbornly refused to see what was right before their eyes (the denial crowd). There were also some who were unwilling to see anything other than what was right before their eyes (the despair crowd).

But Ezekiel saw. He saw what the people with whom he lived either couldn't or wouldn't see. He saw in wild and unforgettable images, elaborated in exuberant detail -God at work in a catastrophic era. 

The denial people refused to see that the catastrophe was in fact catastrophic. How could it be? God wouldn't let anything that bad happen to them. Ezekiel showed them. He showed them that, yes, there was catastrophe, but God was at work in the catastrophe, sovereignly using the catastrophe. He showed them so that they would be able to embrace God in the worst of times.

The despair people, overwhelmed by the devastation, refused to see that life was worth living. How could it be? They had lost everything, or would soon - country, Temple, freedom, and many, many lives. Ezekiel showed them. He showed them that God was and would be at work in the wreckage and rubble, sovereignly using the disaster to create a new people of God.

Whether through denial or despair, the people of God nearly lost their identity as a people of God. But they didn't. God's people emerged from that catastrophic century robust and whole. And the reason, in large part, was Ezekiel.

Like Jesus, Ezekiel just hung around his family working in the village until he was 30 and received the prophetic call. 

He spanned the cataclysmic event of the fall of Jerusalem in 586: for years beforehand he prophesied doom and gloom and the need for repentance; for years after the fall he offered hope and consolation."

And from a novel (Michael Obrien) with Ezekiel as the protagonist:

"I unearthed an old arrowhead, its shaft and feathers long rotted into dust. It was fashioned of metal, not stone. It may have come from an Israelite bow during a battle against Canaanites or Moabites, or it may be older still.

I feel the arrowhead linking me to the distant past, tethering me to my ancestors, for whenever I turn it over and over in my fingers, a mood passes through me, like a soft wind from a far land, and I feel most keenly that those people in stories were real, as I am real."

**

Random thought: The propagation of religious truth may not too different from the propagation of the species. The plumbing of “how sex works” is not immediately obvious to many kids, absent information,  much as religious facts like “there is a God who loves you” is not immediately obvious. 

The kids, in this example, wouldn’t naturally learn sex from books just as religion isn’t naturally learned from books - even the Bible.  If a kid had no idea about sex, he wouldn’t just suddenly look on the shelves of a library under titles about sex. If another kid had no idea about Christianity, he wouldn’t be motivated to go on the shelves and look for the Bible.

The Bible is meant more for the already instructed in the way that sex is meant more for those who already know how to do it. The initial kernel of knowledge, be it with regard to sex or religion, is passed down from the generation previous: Let’s say that an adult told one child, and that child then told his schoolmates - that can still be traced as having been passed down from a generation previous. 

If Christianity depended on the Bible to propagate itself, it would be slower in the same way that mankind propagating itself would occur more slowly if no children were allowed to find out about sex except through a book.  

All of which is to say that it’s the reason you need a Church and evangelists.  

Twenty Minutes in Olde Columbus

Duty (as in jury) called the other week and they provided lunchtimes which I took to walk around and snap pictures...

Great Southern delights

"Historic Building, Modern Thinking" read sign out front, meaning "Historic Building, Heretical Thinking" 

an Oirish pub

Door, adorned. (2023)

"Lutheran Book Concern Publishers" (extant 1881-1940)...imagine a time when a religious denomination could own a 5-story building in downtown Columbus.

Schlee... Kemmler! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated

Barrister in the wild, walking to court. Note the stylish handbag.

Irish pub, former brothel in 1800s.

Victory's Bar, est 1984

Augustine Translation Comparison (Confessions)

I have this fascination with translation (which is why I like almost every Bible translation there is). I'm reading three versions of St Augustine's Confessions and here are examples: 

The first version is: "The Confessions (The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century)"(Maria Boulding), the second is "Confessions (Modern Library) Augustine and Sarah Ruden" and the third is "Confessions  ... Augustine, Peter Brown, Michael Foley, F. J. Sheed, and Michael P. Foley". 

1. I ceased to will all that I had been wont to will, and now willed what you willed. But where had my power of free decision been throughout those long, weary years, and from what depth, what hidden profundity, was it called forth in a moment, enabling me to bow my neck to your benign yoke and my shoulders to your light burden, O Christ Jesus, my helper and redeemer?

My mind was free at last from the gnawing need to seek advancement and riches, to welter in filth and scratch my itching lust. Childlike, I chattered away to you, my glory, my wealth, my salvation, and my Lord and God.

2. I stopped wanting what I had been wanting, and instead wanted what you wanted. But where was your right hand in that stretch of time so weighed down with its years? From what deep, what deepest, hidden place was my free choice in an instant called out—the choice to place my neck under your yoke, and my shoulders under your light load, the load that was yours, Jesus Christ, my helper, who bought me out of slavery?

How delectably it happened, all of a sudden: all of those inane delectations weren’t there any longer; I’d been terrified of losing them, but now I was delighted to turn them loose. You, my true, my highest sweetness, threw that nonsense out of me—threw it out and entered in its place; sweeter than any pleasure, though not felt in the body and the blood...

3. By Your gift I had come totally not to will what I willed but to will what You willed. But where in all that long time was my free will, and from what deep sunken hiding-place was it suddenly summoned forth in the moment in which I bowed my neck to Your easy yoke and my shoulders to Your light burden, Christ Jesus, my Helper and my Redeemer?

How lovely I suddenly found it to be free from the loveliness of those vanities, so that now it was a joy to renounce what I had been so afraid to lose. For You cast them out of me, O true and supreme Loveliness, You cast them out of me and took their place in me, You who are sweeter than all pleasure, yet not to flesh and blood; brighter than all light, yet deeper within than any secret; loftier than all honour, but not to those who are lofty to themselves. Now my mind was free from the cares that had gnawed it, from aspiring and getting and weltering in filth and rubbing the scab of lust. And I talked with You as friends talk, my glory and my riches and my salvation, my Lord God.

Quotes, Financial Crises, etc.. aka Spanning the Globe...

Interesting analysis from Tom Luongo on leverage and near zero interest rates and its effect on society: 

“All of the woke-ism and dumb ideas that have proliferated have done so at the zero bound rates. A corrupt money begets a corrupt society - we can’t even define who a man and a woman is anymore. Dumb ideas don’t die when money has no cost. Getting rid of the leverage is how you get rid of a lot of the aberrant behavior. Get rid of cheap money and everyone’s like, ‘Guess we don’t have time to waste time on things like whether or not words are micro-aggressions because there are ditches to be dug, electricity lines to be run....We’ve had this false sense of having conquered scarcity which only comes with the mania of fifteen years of zero-bound dollars.” 

More controversially and speculatively he continues on the bank failure today (Silicon Valley Bank): 

This Silicon Valley Bank thing is happening before 5pm on a Friday.  So, this is meant to affect the closing of this week's market. In 2008/09 all the FCID bank closures happened after the market closed on Fridays to limit the damage.  Today we are treated to a vandalistic Biden regime making a big deal out of this DURING trading hours. From a purely political and qualitative standpoint I'd say a number of things are at play here.

For a major SV bank to fail this spectacularly in 24 hours, 72 after the FOMC Chair went full hawk smells of a setup to force a "pivot" this weekend.

But, it could also be revenge for the direct attacks on JPM CEO Jamie Dimon by running a 'nuts and sluts' campaign on him through Jeffrey Epstein and an incomprehensible ruling against him earlier in the week.

We have continued attacks happening against Credit Suisse, who the Fed helped out last summer, and who the Saudis and UAE put large sums into their spun-off IB unit.

This is a clear Davos attack on their enemies.

Peter Thiel comes out against $SIVB lends credence to me that this is a $JPM revenge play against SV for selling out the US to foreign, globalist powers. Take away their money, you take away their power.  More fallout from the Fed's war on egregious leverage. 

This smells like another $FTX hit job by the Fed and Wall St. to roll over one of their clear enemies and this is why it's not happening over the weekend...

I'm not here to give definitive answers but to present the possible scenarios at play.

**

Ye olde Catholic blogger of yore, Jim of "Bethune Catholic", is exactly my age.  Steph and I visited him in South Carolina quite a few years ago. 

Despite his (relative) youth, he had open heart surgery in December. 

His initial post: 

I am home! Surgery a great success and "miraculous" in the words of the surgeon. Without going into too many details, 4- 100% blockages successfully bypassed, when initially, it was questionable if a by-pass would even work. Doctor didn't understand why I was still walking around especially being so active.

Now, some may say it is all the bacon and sausage I consume, but not only do we not eat so much of that, it is more the food I consume when I am off-farm which has gotten me. (I love doughnuts!).

Some TWO MONTHS later (ouch) he writes this: 

I don't like to dwell too much on my surgery and recovery, but what else is there? I still have trouble concentrating enough to read deep. But I am still thinking, but still occupied with the whole experience.

So, do I recommend it? That is do I recommend open heart surgery? More accurately, was the fun I had for 58 or so years clogging my arteries worth the pain of Cbbg X 4 and the current ongoing recovery.

I guess it is analogous to our life and Heaven vs. Hell. We can chase pleasure, power, wealth and (supposed) happiness for our 58 or 93 years or whatever time we have on this Earth and consequently suffer Hell.

Of course surgery and recovery is not eternal, so the analogy eventually breaks down.

But going forward, I certainly will try to avoid a repeat even if I need to suffer a little bit more. I am finding out that many of my elderly neighbors have had multiple open hearts. Not sure I am man enough to go through it again.

Prayers for Jim. 

**

Of your charity, pray/give here to a relative of Darwin Catholic's family:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-for-baby-joshua-and-the-egan-family?member=25585661&utm_campaign=p_lico+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer

**

Pope Benedict XVI once wrote: 

“Let us renew our ‘yes’ to God who chose the way of the Cross in order to save us. This is the great mystery which continues and will continue to take place until the end of the world, and which also asks for our collaboration.”  

The mystery of human suffering is only exceeded by the mystery of God suffering in the person of Jesus. It’s odd enough for humans to have to suffer but more so for sinless Jesus. 

**

“International Women’s Day” was yesterday.  There should be an “international humans day” because the biggest current threat is not seeing humans as intrinsically valuable.

**

Sometimes at lunch when I was working downtown I’d head off to the Columbus Library and walked past Grant Medical Center. It’s a large modern hospital and I never gave it a second thought but had I been able to time -travel back to 1950 I would’ve seen an amazing Victorian building called “St Francis Hospital”. Like most beautiful old buildings, it was razed in 1957.  

And even more odd is that I would be passing by the office of a 42 year old nun who was my dad’s godmother. (Technically anyway; she was a bit hands-off when it came of that role but who am I to judge?)

Sister Marie Grace served in Columbus, in the finance offices of St Francis Hospitals, splitting her time between one in Indiana and this one in Columbus from 1943 to 1953.

St Francis was built during the Civil War: 

“Because of the lack of medical facilities in Columbus, local physicians organized a move to bring a group of nuns to the Columbus community to serve as health care workers in 1861. In February 1865, a 99-year lease was granted to the Sisters of the Poor of St. Francis to operate St. Francis Hospital.”

**

James Rosen has a new bio out on Antonin Scalia. The way "Washington works" sounds suspiciously like "the Spirit of Vatican II" and the desire to go beyond what the Council's texts said. From an Eric Metaxas interview: 

“Scalia became worldly about the way Washington works. He came to understand that sometimes lawmakers would recognize there were certain provisions they wanted enacted into law but that wouldn’t survive an actual floor vote so they would sprinkle indications of their intent for the law into floor debates, committee reports..and they were confident that when the law was enacted liberal judges, strolling through the garden of legislative history, would find these little seedlings and expand the meaning of the law beyond the text that was passed and graft their own policy preferences onto laws.” 

The Deep State Divided the GOP

A quick “theory of everything”:

Roe v Wade involved unelected judges doing the legislature's job (like a foreign body in your eye) which helped destroy national unity. The one-size-fits-all nature of the Court allowed the country to break apart (see Bork hearing, Kavannaugh hearing, Thomas hearing, etc...). 

Now we have unelected Fed agencies crippling presidential admins, censoring social media, covering up investigations involving political adjacent figures like Hunter, etc. This has divided the GOP into "neutral-Deep State" (like National Review), pro-Deep State (Bulwark types) and anti-Deep State (MAGA). 

It's possible that without the DS, Trump's popularity would've faded and the establishment wing of GOP would've been ascendent. The word "martyr" means witness, and Trump's political killers have made him an unwitting witness of the sickness of the body politic. We found out the cure (Deep State) is worse than the seeming illness (Trump). 

Since Dems are the party of the deep state and big state, they are unaffected and GOP ends up the divided party. The Dems are in a good place politically given the new muscular deep state environ. 

There is no way to get a united "anti-Deep State GOP" (pardon the oxymoron) due to the huge incentive structure in terms of political funding by DS adjacent companies, media power, money laundering, personal reputations of members (due to black-mailing), etc...

Decent summary of our situation:

DeSantis supporters are voting for good policies that the Regime will never allow to be implemented. Trump people are voting to delegitimize the Regime, which is a necessary first step towards actually being able to govern. 

Trump is the Regime’s most hated candidate, so voting for him best delegitimizes the Regime.

The goal is to have something ready to replace the Regime when it falls. And it will fall. But our time, energy, and talent should be focused on building our Kingdom, rather than tearing down theirs.

The smart conservative knows to play the long game. If you’re focused on winning the general in 2024, you’re not thinking seriously. We can’t make meaningful changes on that timeline. Before we can even think about winning general elections, we need to completely take over the GOP. We do this by refusing to vote for a compromise candidate, making it clear that we would rather lose than vote for the managed decline of our country.

Previously Censored Post

 This 2014 post was just flagged so I'm tweaking it ...to  see what happens. 

Fascinating to read of the comments of the founder of librarything.com about the dystopian novel The Circle by David Eggers (some spoilers apply):

Rating. I loved the part where Francis wanted Mae to give his s-xu-l performance a number rating--and the denouement, where he insists that her final number was better than her attempt to nuance the topic with language.

As many here know, this is a particular bête noire of mine. I think ratings are mostly crap for deciding between books. Whether or not they are, however, I think they are broadly corrosive of deep conversation. LibraryThing represents an old model of social interaction around taste--that people want to review things, and reviews aren't a word or two. By and large we've moved to an online universe of five-star ratings, less-than-binary "likes," and contextless "shares."

I find this stifling and dystopic already. As my friend Josh Christie put it recently on Twitter, "Today, try and think critically about some media without giving it a letter grade, a number, or a star rating."

More and more, this isn't just books and movies. It's people. "Hot or Not" was an early example, but that was a stupid web trick compared to Lulu. Have you heard of Lulu—1 million users, including 1/3 of college-age women belong to a site where you rate men you've dated, with two million reviews already. Yes, you get a star rating. Oh, and your dates' estimation of your p-nis size is now online. ( See this TLDR review of it http://www.onthemedia.org/story/its-rating-men/ ) And, of course, it has what previous people-rating systems didn't--a hard tie into Facebook, so the integrity of the system is assured, with both raters and ratings tied to real people.

De-complexification of social interaction. Closely related to ratings are the reduction in conversational complexity inherent in "smile," "frown,"* "friend" and the various social ranking systems in the novel. With Jaron Lanier (You Are Not a Gadget), I do feel these user-interface conventions are dumbing down and flattening our social world. As Lanier writes, simplistic social categories like that are how you explain social life to an autistic person; now we live out a big part of our social life using tools that operate on autistic grounds. Sure, people find ways to subvert the system, but it trickles down and out.

Unification of online identity. I think this is the core thing going on with the circle. Facebook has shown the way. The world of "on the internet nobody knows you're a dog" is gone; now the world knows exactly who you are, tied to a Facebook identity you can hardly get rid of. Other services have glommed onto that assurance. You can't sign up for Spotify without a Facebook account. You can't even LOOK at some popular clothing sites without signing in via Facebook.

This rang the truest for me. This is coming. It's already here. All Facebook needs to do is wait, as the entire online world gloms onto the clear advantages of tracing everything you do to a single, table and largely trustable identity. It does or can solve so many problems--passwords, shopping carts, online rudeness, marketing channels, etc. And as with many social technologies, it gets stronger and better as it grows.

Also, as with many social technologies, the important thing is to get to scale. Once you have scale, you can turn the screws. I do see a day when we pay for most of our purchases with out Facebook account, or its equivalent, and, of course, Facebook owns, processes and sells the data accumulated in this way. In fact, this is already happening in a spit-and-chewing-gum way, as a whole industry has sprung up to connect Facebook accounts, emails, credit cards and other social data. The only real hope lies in the proliferation of systems--Amazon, Google and Apple all wanting you to use their systems. But identity is close to a natural monopoly; players will drop out.

Mandatory socialization. This is a big trend in technology companies, and it's spreading to other parts of the economy. Time was when your job was your job, your life your life. Startup life changes that. It's certainly true for LibraryThing--my life and my job are extensively merged, and our resume-calls ask people to tell us about their food preferences and outside interests. Mind you, I think this is a good thing. I think the work/life dichotomy is flawed and even bogus. But it has its protective value, and it's something that can go bad, for sure.

This theme is everywhere in the novel, of course. The Circle provides meals for everyone, and parties. Attendance at parties is "semi-mandatory." CE employees are encouraged to become part of their customers' social circles, answer their questionnaires and, in turn, are invited to stay at their houses, etc. This isn't that far from current reality. Google does a lot of this--keeping people on "campus" as much as possible and, well, LibraryThing staff are indeed encouraged to participate on the site.**

Transparency. The novel picked up on a general claim--that transparency makes everything better. This notion is everywhere in our culture now: that it doesn't matter how much money people spend on political causes so long as it's "transparent"; that legislatures and courtrooms need camera; that politicians need to tweet, etc. Much more to say, obviously.

No delete button. This one's obvious. I was almost disappointed that Mae's video didn't pop up later in the story, as it threatened to. But the overall truth of this was clear. Moore's law (or perhaps "Kryder's Law"), Big Data, the unification of online identity and other factors have conspired to create a world without a delete key.

As a side note, a person we work with in another company recently wrote us that he couldn't find the origins of a particular business conversation because he had deleted the emails. Abby and I basically responded at the same time "Who f-ck deletes emails!?!"

The gamification of shelter allotment. One of the few times I laughed out loud was, "Homelessness could be helped or fixed, she knew, once the gamification of shelter allotment and public housing in general was complete."

The Circle wasn't a ramification dystopia--that throw-away line goes more toward the techno-utopian idea that social problems are all amenable to a technological solution. But someone has made a gamification dystopia, called "Sight." 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* "Frown" is actually an improvement. There is no frown on Facebook, and indeed I find it a rather frown-free world. That, perhaps, has more to do with the general reality that most people don't like to disagree or question. The early internet was a wrestle of ideas, often veering into the belief that only ideas matter; that's been largely reduced to sharing some online piece with your friends, who all agreed with it already.

Also on librarything.com, a discussion on the Circle & whether there's a Catholic angle.

Attention Deficit and Book Reading

I keep track of how many books I read each year and noticed that the big fall off (50%!) occurred in 2017. 

Why 2017? It was the year Trump changed everything. Well, Trump didn’t change anything, his enemies did. It was the year I realized that the shock and awe of the Iraq War had visited America in the form of a rogue state. It was the year I realized we were in an information war with our own government and since then I’ve used this as an excuse to read fewer books, alas. Mea culpa.

Relatedly, Amy Welborn posted a New Yorker piece about attention and how the monastics were keen observers and guardians of their thoughts. Certainly convicting to me as I let my mind “free range” with distractions like politics way too much. 

**

I can’t help but think of the parallels between the two great health gurus of the 1970s. I can’t help but feel like God was sending a message with their early deaths. 

James Fixx and Nathanial Pritikin wrote their gigantic best-selling books within a year of each other and died a year apart. Fixx had perhaps too much faith in running’s ability to prevent heart disease and similarly Pritikin and the Longevity Institute might've been a bit too sure about diet. 

From Epoch Times: 

“Nathan Pritikin, the father of the largely vegetarian Pritikin diet, had been diagnosed with heart disease at the age of 41. His cholesterol was over 300 mg/dL.

After following his own diet, he eventually lowered his cholesterol to 120 mg/dL. However, he ultimately ended up with two different kinds of leukemia, and he finally committed suicide at age 69.” 

The other major health guru of that era was Kenneth Cooper. He was the founder of aerobics movement which got me started running even before the Fixx book and he’s still very much alive at age 92.  Cooper has written about the importance of Christian religious faith in his life.