The light has not been fixed yet. On the other hand, there was a three-hour ice-cream giveaway in the atrium. I think most people would take the latter. “Sorry, no Ben & Jerry’s - we’ve spent it all on fixing that one blinky light.”

“Fair enough. I can get ice cream at home. Better that the illumination is fixed so no one trips.”

The twitching bulb:

It's like a distant star whose planet is detected by the way the orbiting body interrupts the light.

I am very invested in this, as you can tell. It’s the small things that get me through the day and help drive out the dull thudding dismay. It’s the first thing I see when I head up to the escalators - which is why I almost barked my shin down to the bone, because when I got on the escalator it did not spin up and rise. The new escalator program activates when you get near. So timing your approach to the steps has to change to anticipate the change. I’ve internalized a certain pause before it gets up to speed. You subtly adjust all your muscles to an escalator ride, leaning in, rebalancing, and since it didn't move I almost toppled over, which meant cracking the shin against the teeth of the step.

It’s the same with the new elevator software. They reprogrammed the ride. It used to bolt right up. Now you wait a few beats before they rise or fall. At first there was that little hitch in the sternum - am I trapped? And then it moves.

As with the escalators, I have internalized the extra beats. It almost makes the elevator seem a bit resigned to its job. Fine. Okay. Up. Whatever. What's the point. You'll only come down again. Before it leaped up, as if it was interested in taking you places. Now you feel like a burden.

Untold millions have been spent on these things.

I was reading stories today about the protest in Lafayette square, and the spray-painting of the statues.

It doesn’t even merit discussing, really. It's the norm. Right? The reason they don’t go to jail for defacing the statuary at Lafayette Square is because the authorities, however you define them here, don’t want them arrested. We’re not even talking about shoving them in the Paddy Wagon (sorry, insensitive) and taking them down to cool it in the clink for a while before getting a lecture and a tut-tut finger-wagging admonition. At this point you wish they’d get at least that.

Oh, it’s a manpower issue. Oh, the Park Police were outmanned. They didn’t want to escalate. You know full well that if literal actual brownshirts showed up wearing double Xs from the Chaplin movie there would be a National Conversation about this, right? But we’ve had the national conversation, in 2020, and it consisted of “affronts to statuary are revered expressions of justified anger over injustice, and the conversation is now over.”

The other story that twins nicely: the kids arrested for peeling out on a pride flag painted on a street. As this LBGTQEtc site notes, "The scooter gang could serve up to five years in jail under the new law."

Yes, yes, different jurisdictions, yada and/or yada, but it’s a stark and obvious difference. If the kids had painted over the flag with the Hamas flag, it probably would’ve been a wash, and the community service levied would require painting another flag elsewhere in town. Because the Hamas flag would suddenly be untouchable. Some people might say "nah, that's too far," but the Hamas flag is now associated with victimhood.

Lime, the electric scooter company, has geofenced the flag so your scooter stops when you approach it, and you have to walk. So everyone who uses their product is presumed to be capable of felonious skid-leaving. You wonder if they have a team ready to disable the scooters if they're heading to a rally in support of the teens.

“All of us at Lime condemn these vile acts in no uncertain terms,” Lime Director of Government Relations Hayden Harvey told Sinclair Broadcasting’s far-right headline news show The National Desk.

“At a time when our teams at Lime are beginning Pride celebrations around the globe, it is disturbing to see the hate taking place in Spokane.”

Makes you wonder if the company is sweating a little, hoping no one knows that those celebrations include parties in Israel, where Lime operates. They probably know they're one rally away from being accused of genocide. Who knows how they might respond? Perhaps, just be safe, they'd make the scooters shut off within six blocks of a synagogue. I mean, imagine an enlightened citizen of the world seeing a cluster of Lime scooters outside a synagogue, suggesting they'd been used to drive there. The optics would be a public service nightmare.

And then we have this, again, and again. (Screengrab, not a link)

		The day also had some masked streetfighters shoving the press out of the scene. They had wooden shields with handles, all made according to some template. Again, we need to have a National Conversation, except that we had one, and it consisted of "all campus protests from the left have an inherent santification, and now the conversation is concluded."

We are never asked to consider which institutions, organizations, and ideologies support these actions. They just spontaneously arise out of the rich agar of American Injustice. But while there are orgs that provide instructional and logistical support, the tolerance of disorder is not coordinated on high. The idea that the Masters of the Puppets all smile at this, because it assists their goal of destroying everything, isn't true. No one in the DC power structure wants to destroy the DC power structure. The benefits are too sweet. No one in campus administration wants to destroy the soft life of a college administrator. But they want to hasten the ideological shift that permanently exiles dissent, and narrowly defines the vocabulary of political discussion, because this gives them more influence, and hence a thicker teat at which to suckle.

Previously: college professors have to sign a document pledging that they do not belong to an organization devoted to destroying the United States

The Desired Future: college professors have to sign a document pledging that they do not oppose any organization devoted to destroying the United States

I mean, it's the only way to make sure Good triumphs. It's all pretty clear. You have your state-emboldened street-gang Jew-hating collectivists on one side, and on the other, obviously, you got your Nazis.

It’s 1900.

Looks like 1789.

Starke, Florida: that’s the place. Wikipedia: “Starke's weekly newspaper, The Bradford County Telegraph, began publication in 1879 as The Florida Weekly Telegraph (it continues to be the oldest weekly newspaper in Florida today).”

Good for them. No small achievement, that.

		BREAKING NEWS MINUTES APPROVED OLD LADY PUT ON DOLE

The front page is almost entirely ads. Ah, here’s some international news!

		⁃ ahhh, nevermind.

		The lead items for the editorial page.

I tell you, this is the dullest thing I’ve ever seen. Ah, a page of jokes:

Okay, well, I suppose they did have lesbian orgies in 1900.

Treachery!

		Wikipedia: During the Boxer Rebellion, on 11 June 1900, the secretary of the Japanese legation, Sugiyama Akira was attacked and killed by the Muslim soldiers of General Dong Fuxiang near Yongdingmen, who were guarding the southern part of the Beijing walled city.

SOP. We all know what that means, right? Right.

Well, yes

Well, what did he do?

		Going WAY out on a limb here.

Mayor Woodward. Okay, to be fair, he was a newspaperman:

James G. Woodward (January 14, 1845 – August 29, 1923)[1] was an American newspaperman and politician, having served as the 36th, 39th and 43rd Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia.

Woodward made his living as printer through the newsrooms of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution over the years. He was elected Mayor in 1899 and 1904. Following the Atlanta race riot of 1906, he won the 1908 Democratic primary (in a virtually one party state) but was arrested for public intoxication less than a month before the December general election and was defeated by Robert Maddox.[2] He served his third and fourth terms following Courtland Winn. Trying for a fifth term as Atlanta mayor, he ran (and lost) in September 1922, a year before his death.

The Atlanta race riot of 1906 was a defining moment of Woodward's political career, to which occasion he did not rise.

		Will he be okay? And then some.

He will.

Richmond Pearson Hobson (August 17, 1870 – March 16, 1937) was a United States Navy rear admiral who served from 1907–1915 as a U.S. Representative from Alabama. A veteran of the Spanish–American War, he received the Medal of Honor years later for his part in that conflict. He later became a leading proponent of Prohibition in the United States.

I don’t know where he was in 1900 that he was required to come home, but I gather he was having a good time:

Hobson became a hero of the American press while he was a prisoner of war in Cuba. His portrait appeared in hundreds of newspapers with embellished stories of his bravery in volunteering for what was perceived as a suicide mission. A fund was raised to aid his parents in avoiding foreclosure of their mortgage. When Hobson was released during a prisoner exchange on July 6, 1898, hundreds of American troops snapped to attention, then burst into cheers as he passed.

He was deluged with speaking invitations when he returned to the United States. After dining with President William McKinley, Hobson traveled west by train en route to San Francisco and the Philippines. Crowds greeted his train at many stations, and his enthusiasm for kissing admiring young women made him a sex symbol of the Victorian age. He became a sort of celebrity during the rise of popular journalism at the turn of the century and was referred to as "the most kissed man in America."

I wonder if his record still stands.

That'll do. Next for you: 1951 gas. How many websites can say that.