All the people

Leo XIV is not only the Pope. He is, of course, also the first American pope, as in, from the US. (Francis, as an Argentinian, was American in a more general sense.) That brings a couple of things to the fore, especially when he weighs in on something like AI.

Firstly, while various waves of immigration have made the US more Catholic in a demographic sense, it remains in a real sense a very Protestant country. A Catholic prelate reflects in public in what the right thing to do is, what it means to follow the example of Christ. But for those who believe on some level in predestination, this moral angst is faggoty at best and possibly blasphemous.

Secondly, more specifically, a kind of Protestant ethic―certainly not endemic to all Protestants, but prevalent―sees wealth as a virtue in itself and an earthly measure of wisdom. Thus Silicon Valley honchos have leveraged being billionaires with at least one trillionaire among them into a new status as public sages. This is not a first.

This thoughtful article gives a counter-read on the Dark Enlightenment, possibly the most common philosophy used in justifying the elevation of tech CEOs into a new aristocracy. Which is something that they support for obvious reasons, but there's no reason for the rest of us to roll over for it. At the very least we can dare to call it the Dork Enlightenment. 

Formidable guardian

King Edmund, also considered a saint, remains an important figure in Bury St. Edmunds, which is named after him. It's a rather wild story. The Vikings killed Edmund for not renouncing his religion and threw his head into the briars. There, the head was guarded by a wolf, and became a relic.

Doris Zinkeisen does justice to it here. She was a theatrical costume designer in addition to being a painter. A sense of the theatrical is what it needs. You can hardly miss that the head is in a spotlight.

Back & forth

Earlier today I read Lisa Selin Davis on Democrats and gender medicine. That's a subject that I'm not going to go into because I don't think too often about it. But it did make me think about debate, and what's happened to it.

Public debates on hot topics became a big thing (again) in the 60s. And they were not the kinds of debate where liberals tiptoe around other liberals. Very often what you'd see is, "Norman Mailer and Random Black Panther call each other the Antichrist, agree women belong in the kitchen." You don't miss it until it's gone. 

And nobody expected it to ever be gone. Because what it was was open argument. Whether or not they had explicitly agreed to disagree, everyone knew they'd be disagreeing. There was no reason to hold back, to be anything less than honest.

"Liberals tiptoeing around each other" was more a feature of turn-of-the-millennium rhetoric. And of course smartphones have made the problem worse because the groups who discuss things amongst themselves are now so much more homogeneous.  And then when a truly extreme idea arises, no one knows what to do with it. Except maybe give in.

Shifty character

I'm currently reading The Impostor Heiress, by Annie Reed. It's about Cassie Chadwick, who was born Elizabeth Bigley.

Chadwick was Canadian by birth, but mostly operated in the bigger cities of Ohio. She had a varied career, which included both a pretty much run-of-the-mill check kiting scheme and a clairvoyant act. Her biggest caper was attempting to pass herself off as Andrew Carnegie's illegitimate daughter.

How did all of this work out for her? Not well. While there are careers that strive for immortality, impostors and con artists prefer to remain anonymous. This doesn't really require explanation. But if Cassie Chadwick wasn't exactly a success in her choice of criminal enterprise, she did manage to make the world a more colorful place while she was in it.

Rock dwellers

 

Pikas are, as stated here, relatives of rabbits. They look it, too. So it's interesting that their survival strategies are so far apart. Rabbits burrow into the soft ground, the low ground. It can be in country, city, or suburb. Pikas live high up, among rocks. And it's through that difference that they have ultimately become a different creature.

Our betters

Know that at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a professor has been suspended and is under investigation because she mentioned Palestine in a class assignment. No, really, that's what it's about.

It's also not the first time the SAIC has brought down the hammer on that particular topic. They did some shutting down just back in April.

We're also at a point where war-wary combat veteran Graham Platner has become the presumptive nominee for US Senator in Maine, and both parties are ratfucking his campaign to death. Well, trying to, anyway.

I remember in the 2000s being told that real Americans were all for kicking ass in the Mideast, and only subversives and hipsters were concerned about Arab lives at all. Even then, that was a crass generalization. Still, more recent turns of events have been weird. The broad American populace is now markedly dovish on things like Israel and Iran. And the institutions? Don't care at all. They're backing the neocons all the way, often at the expense of things like free speech.

Something garish

Like I was hoping, I managed to get to sleep the last couple of nights without taking any cough medication. It looks pretty good for tonight, as well. 

There's a reason I prefer this. Besides the taste, which is never particularly good and often wince-inducing. The other thing is that it seems to make my dreams more violent. For instance I dreamed about walking through a door and knowing without looking that the guy who was walking behind me didn't have his head anymore. 

Some of this can be useful for a self-styled creative type, especially if you deal with somewhat dark subject matter. But every night? Nah, take it down a notch.