Yes, the fact that it says RNA on the chalkboard the Kool-Aid Man is about to BREAK THROUGH is the perfect touch.

Sitting in the gazebo, in isolation of course, listening to a party across the street. Everyone’s outside, and unmasked. LITTLE DO THEY KNOW! Although I think someone with a full tank of Delta blasting in your mug for half an hour would probably get through the mask. They’ll never feel sick, and never number themselves among the stricken.

“The stricken.” Yes, that’s me, the equivalent of someone on a thin cot in a field hospital, shaking with ague.

You may wonder how I am whiling away the hours. Well. This morning I finished the penultimate folder of a site on pre-war 1940s ads, because it’s a niche unfilled. They’re fascinating. Military images step into the ads gradually, with smiles and brio and confidence. We’ve got what it takes! Brother, you’d better bet we’re prepared! It’s quite remarkable, given that the country was not at war, but you can feel the dread and anxiety seep in to the culture.

I’ve no idea when this site will be up. I think it has about 400 pages.

Then there’s the other 10-day project, which I swore I would not do, but I am doing it. This will be revealed on the 10th day, if I may sound all Revelations for a moment.

Had a nice conversation via email today with a doctor fellow quite knowledgeable on vaccines and statistics.He wanted to know what test I’d took, since he is curious about false positives among asymptomatic cases, and recommended taking another test.

I’m split on this. At this point I would be rather disappointed to test negative, since this is obviously bearable, and I get more immunity points, right? I googled “can I get COVID a second time if I got it the first time after vaccination” or words to that effect, and there doesn’t seem to be a clear answer.

Sigh. I just want is a return to that brief window of post-vaccination freedom, when it seemed . . . over.

Nothing seems over. But. It’s like the holodeck broke. All the furniture and landscapes and computer-generated people vanished, and we’re in a small blue room with white lines. The ship is still here, sailing along among the stars, but the story we’ve been enjoying for such a long time hit a bug, and crashed.

Maybe more than one bug.

If we’ve learned any lesson from the last year and a half, it’s the empty fatuity of our leadership class. Hollow men and women, borne aloft by the weak breeze of credentials and connections, reinforced by institutions that have neglected their foundations in favor of lubricating their weathervanes.

We still have respect for scientists who make vaccines and engineers who loft ships into space. For the people who drive trucks and deliver goods. For our neighbors and friends - hell, anyone who takes pride in their jobs and does them well. For people who do their best to raise families. For the members of the military.

For anyone entrusted with the institutions, though, it’s a different matter. Now we’re the guys in “Office Space” interrogating Tom Smykowsk: what is it you would say you do here? You were entrusted with carrying forward the institutions and cultures and values and all the strength they had accumulated, and what has come of it? How much of the seed corn have you put in the microwave?

A lot of aged-like-milk tweets trotted out to bedevil our betters this last week. This one stood out.

How is this not colonialism? How is this not the apogee of cultural imperialism?

If we’ve learned anything from WWI - you know, Woke War One, which we’ve been fighting for the last few years - it’s that colonialism is one of the fundamental sins of the West, and it’s predicated on racism. The White Man’s Burden, and all that. It is wrong, wrong, wrong to impose our standards on another culture.

But: according to Kendi (PBUH), the idea of cultural hierarchies is racist. This has always seemed to be one of his peculiar self-refuting pronouncements, since it means that cultures which do not judge others are the on the same moral plane as cultures that do. It is nonsense. Of course some cultures are better than others. The culture that does not stone gay people is inferior, in this particular respect, to cultures that do not, and are probably inferior in many other ways as well.

What do you mean, “inferior”? I mean “not as good as others.” I mean the culture that suppresses liberty, confiscates property, views people as interchangeable instances of a clan or class, regards women as property, demands adherence to a particular religion, is not as good as the one that does half of these things, and that culture is inferior to the one that does not do any of those things.

That said, what gives us the right to tell a conservative society it should adopt our values about something regard as haram? The unspoken rationale: because we’re right, and if we stick up for what’s right, we will empower the people in the society who agree, and they will transform society. That works in some places. It does not work in all places. Think of Western liberal values as the second floor of a house, not a foundation. The foundation is the culture, and is resistant to change. The first floor is the everyday life of the culture, which is practical. The second floor is the set of ideas that shape the direction of the society. We were trying to rebuild the foundation with second-story material.

Personally, I don’t think we should have negotiated anything with the Taliban. But we did. Have you read the agreement?   It’s delusional. There’s nothing in the agreement that spells out consequences for Taliban aggression. It’s basically “Mom and Dad are going to Europe for two weeks, and don’t you invite any of your friends over for a party.”

“Pinky swear,” says the Taliban.

There is this:

The United States and its allies will refrain from the threat or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Afghanistan or intervening in its domestic affairs.

We lived up to our end: we refrained from intervening in its domestic affairs at the precise moment when at instructional MOAB might have slowed the inevitable, and allowed us time to process the applications from the translators, give them their COVID tests, and ensure they didn’t have problems with Drag Queen Story hour.

Actually, if they did have problems, that would be okay. They wouldn’t be the problem. They come from a non-American culture, and hence are free from sin, with the added shiny attribute of Vibrancy to give them a plus-up in the hierarchy. (Which is a wrong thing to have, remember.) The real problem are the people who have lost faith in the most important part of America: their betters.

And now did that happen? Like the quote about going broke: gradually, then suddenly. Or perhaps when we realized that the weathervane had been permanently bolted to point in one direction, and wouldn’t move to reflect the true direction of the wind, no matter how strong it blew.

It’s 1949.

Not the most visually impressive page, but you knew you’d get your money’s worth.

Bonus: TITO OFFENSIVE SHEDS

Hurley may have had a point.

The story as described today:

Patrick Jay Hurley (January 8, 1883 – July 30, 1963) was an American politician and diplomat. He was the United States Secretary of War from 1929 to 1933, but is best remembered for being Ambassador to China in 1945.

A man of humble origins, Hurley's lack of what was considered to be a proper ambassadorial demeanor and mode of social interaction made professional diplomats scornful of him.

He came to share pre-eminent army strategist Wedemeyer's view that the Communists could be defeated and America ought to commit to doing so even if it meant backing the Kuomintang Party and Chiang Kai-shek to the hilt.

Frustrated, Hurley resigned as Ambassador to China in 1945, and publicised his concerns about high ranking members of the State department, alleging they believed that the Chinese communists were not totalitarians and the United States priority was to avoid allying with a losing side in the civil war.

If only the Reds hadn't won. Imagine that world.

Family sells home, takes to the oceans, ends up media sensation:

An obit::

At the time they started their trip, their children ranged in age from 12 year old Nancy to 1 year old Ross.  Almost complete novices at sailing, the Potters weathered many storms, troubleshot endless engine problems and once unknowingly sailed into the middle of U.S. Naval torpedo practice. 

Mr. Potter wrote a book about the trip, called “No One Fell Overboard.”

Thereby stifling sales to near nil, because that's what people would want to read about.

The Peacemaker! That was the B-36.

What a beast. Wiki: “Due to its massive size, the B-36 was never considered sprightly or agile; Lieutenant General James Edmundson likened it to '...sitting on your front porch and flying your house around.’”

The XC-99 was basically a B-36, reconfigured.

“Funny, Reg! But . . . wouldn’t the Red be riding whatever the Ruble symbol is?”

“No one would know what that was.”

		The dry drollery and droll driness of Bennett Cerf, twinkling grinner. A merry little tale! Padded out with an unnecessary paragraph! And he's an editor!

Guess: is this a column, or a story? Seems like the latter, but it’s on the editorial page, so maybe it’s one of those columns written in the voice of a character.

		Uh

Finally, this was a surprise. And a nice one.

Here’s why it was nice: as generic as I thought the style might be when I first encountered it, the work is recognizable to me now, and I could tell you who this was without looking at the sig.

1949, and he was still working.

		That'll do! See you tomorrow.