Gateway to Heaven?
Walking through Selwyn College the other day on my way to a conversation elsewhere with Audrey Tang (one of the most remarkable people I’ve met) I was struck by this framing of the college’s chapel as I went in through the gate.
Quote of the Day
”The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.”
- H.L. Mencken
Now of which prominent public figure(s) could this now be said?
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
George Gershwin Prelude No. 2 | Matthias Lang
Long Read of the Day
The Imperialism Has No Clothes
Historian Timothy Snyder had a nice essay which I heartily recommend about J.D. Vance’s ludicrous foray to Greenland, .
I particularly liked this bit:
As a parting shot, Vance told Greenlanders that life with the United States would be better than with Denmark. Danish officials have been too diplomatic to answer directly the insults directed at them from their own territory during an uninvited visit by imperialist hotheads. Let me though just note a few possible replies, off the top of my head. The comparison between life in the United States and life in Denmark is not just polemical. Musk-Trump treat Europe as though it were some decadent abyss, and propose that alliances with dictatorships would somehow be better. But Europe is not only home to our traditional allies; it is an enviable zone of democracy, wealth and prosperity with which it benefits us to have good relations, and from which we can sometimes learn.
So consider. The US is 24th in the world in the happiness rankings. Not bad. But Denmark is number two (after Finland). On a scale of 1 to 100, Freedom House ranks Denmark 97 and the US 84 on freedom — and the US will drop a great deal this year. An American is about ten times more likely to be incarcerated than a Dane. Danes have access to universal and essentially free health care; Americans spend a huge amount of money to be sick more often and to be treated worse when they are. Danes on average live four years longer than Americans. In Denmark university education is free; the average balance owed by the tens of millions of Americans who hold student debt in the US is about $40,000. Danish parents share a year of paid parental leave. In the US, one parent might get twelve weeks of unpaid leave. Denmark has children’s story writer Hans Christian Andersen. The US has children’s story writer JD Vance. American children are about twice as likely as Danish children to die before the age of five…
My commonplace booklet

Screenshot
The heading on Monday’s edition caused a flurry of nice emails. Some pointed out that Monday was in fact March 31. All were too polite to voice their suspicion that it might be a sign that I was losing what might loosely be called my mind. More suspicious readers wondered if it might be some kind of weird April Fool’s joke.
John Seeley was one of the latter. “So this is the joke,” he wrote, “given that it is March 31?”
This could operate at various levels …
- It was your mistake but was funny anyway.
- It was your joke and it was amusing that people did not notice and thought that it was April 1 … in turn making April 1 jokes incorrectly so the joke was on them …
Since my lips were sealed on the matter, he had the good idea of asking Claude.ai, the LLM that I mostly use, about it.
He prompted the machine thus:
Someone writes that it is April the first when it is not, but indicates that they think it is April the first. In how many different ways is that funny? Please explain.
Claude replied:
This scenario is funny in several ways, each playing on the confusion and implications of someone incorrectly believing it’s April 1st (April Fools’ Day):
Dramatic irony – The humor comes from us knowing something the person doesn’t. They think they’re being clever by acknowledging April Fools’ Day, but they’re actually mistaken about the date itself.
Meta-prank – They’ve inadvertently pranked themselves. While attempting to participate in a day of pranks, they’ve become the victim of their own confusion.
Misplaced confidence – There’s humor in someone confidently declaring “it’s April Fools’ Day!” when it isn’t, especially if they’re using it as justification for pranks or skepticism.
Role reversal – On April 1st, people expect to be fooled by others. In this case, the calendar has “fooled” the person about what day it is.
Temporal displacement – They’re celebrating a holiday on the wrong day, similar to putting up Christmas decorations in July.
Social awkwardness – The person might perform April Fools’ behaviors (pranks, jokes, skepticism) that make no sense to others, creating uncomfortable but amusing situations.
Unintentional honesty – If they announce “This is an April Fools’ joke!” when it isn’t April 1st, they’re accidentally telling the truth about their statement being false, creating a paradoxical layer of humor.
Misaligned expectations – The person might be extra vigilant against being pranked on a day when no one else is trying to prank them.
Each of these perspectives offers a different lens on why such a mistaken belief creates comedy through the collision of expectations and reality.
I don’t know about you, but I’m impressed by this. Thanks to John for thinking of it.
Satire rules OK
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