Conkers
Hitherto, it had never occurred to me that Chestnut trees might be interesting at this time of year. Until yesterday.
Quote of the Day
”This damp little shambles of a democracy on the edge of the Western world”.
- Nuala Ó’Faolain on her (and my) native land, which is currently a bit of shambles.
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Mozart | Giunse alfin il momento…Deh vieni non tardar |Marriage of Figaro | Regula Mühlemann
Long Read of the Day
The King, the Queen, and the Ballroom Blitz
Tina Brown on song about King Charles’s visit to the Augean stable that is the current White House.
God, it was nice for British embassy guests to see King Charles and Queen Camilla in person yesterday afternoon! As the royal pair emerged with elderly, familiar grace onto the portico steps of the residence and stood side by side, rooted in history, the volatile Washington circus finally came to a stop. Two teary national anthems were played. There was the sweet smell of freshly mown grass, small sandwiches were passed, and the better-dressed-than-usual DC crowd waited respectfully in assembled “pods” for Their Majesties to unfreeze their pose and descend to emit magical civility.
Given that the last time many in this crowd had seen each other was underneath a table in the Washington Hilton ballroom as a would-be presidential assassin at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner stormed a checkpoint and was wrestled to the ground, the embassy garden party was mint tea for the nerves. Everyone was comparing their Saturday night vignettes of Secret Service heroes vaulting over scattering silverware or the sight of a disorientated RFK Jr. being armpit-lifted out of danger with his actress wife scurrying behind. Right before the king and queen deplaned at Joint Base Andrews, Trump’s creamy-faced flak Karoline Leavitt turned her valedictory, pre-maternity leave speech from the podium into a gargantuan gaslight session of the traumatized press, blaming Saturday night’s violence on hate-filled discourse purveyed by Democrats and the media. Wait, wasn’t it her boss, Donald J. Trump, who godfathered the Jan. 6 mayhem, excoriated the murdered Rob and Michele Reiner last December for having “Trump derangement syndrome,” and commemorated the death of former FBI director Robert Mueller in March with the Truth Social post “Good”? Trump himself in his post-dinner press conference took his propensity to attract assassins as proof he is a president of consequence, like Lincoln (but not, apparently, like Gerald Ford, who nearly took a bullet from Manson mini-maniac Squeaky Fromme).
On the embassy lawn in the spring sunshine, the king glided through the parting crowd as if he were on casters. He first greeted a bipartisan cluster of ingratiating pols that included gangly Scott Bessent, stocky Mike Johnson, Steve Miller with his shiny cue ball head, and Nancy Pelosi, her four-inch heels defiantly sinking in the grass.
Do read on. There are interesting stings in the tail.
Books, etc.
This is a remarkably ambitious book by an Oxford scholar I’ve been following since her first book came out in 2020 (when she gave a presentation about it to our — then new — research centre).
Here’s how she describes it in the Prelude:
This is a technology book, because artificial intelligence is the new Oracle of Delphi and executives the new prophets. It’s a business book, and personal development one, because it explores prophecy as an industry, with a focus on how to avoid falling for false prophets in a “data-driven” world. It explores the history of prediction – from ancient oracles to the development of measurements and probability – to argue that prophecies are more often than not power plays in disguise. It’s a political treatise on how prediction serves social control.
Like I said, ambitious.
My commonplace booklet
Thank God for Private Eye!
Linkblog
Something I noticed, while drinking from the Internet firehose.
King Charles’s speech to Congress
Quite classy, IMHO, especially in current circumstances. Worth watching. Link
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