Saturday  27 Feb 2021           1 comment

From an interview with Frank Zappa's son Ahmet:

interviewer:	In a project like this [the documentary film ZAPPA released last year], what kind of things do you learn about your father that you hadn't expected?
Ahmet Zappa:	... Maybe the biggest mystery was just how many chicks my dad boned. That was surprising. That wasn't great news, you know what I mean? But I guess it's rock and roll. I was really naïve to think that that maybe wasn't going on, but I learned that.

Frank named Ahmet after Ahmet Ertegün.

Friday  19 Feb 2021           1 comment

Thursday  18 Feb 2021           comment?

Tuesday  09 Feb 2021           comment?

I don't trust most Never Trumpers. They ignore their own history and the history of the GOP. A couple days ago, Max Boot wrote,

The problem is that the Republican Party has lost the habit of governance. It's all about performing on TV and Twitter now.

This didn't start in 2016. Leslie Janka—a White House aide during Reagan's first term—quit his job because, as he put it,

The whole thing was PR. This was a PR outfit that became President and took over the country. And to the degree then to which the Constitution forced them to do things like make a budget, run foreign policy and all that, they sort of did. But their first, last, and overarching activity was public relations.

Max Boot also wrote,

Republicans such as Cheney and Rumsfeld, once seen as sensible conservatives, were radicalized by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and sent the United States blundering into "forever wars" that discredited the Republican elite much as the Vietnam War had discredited the "best and brightest" Democrats.

which is remarkable in light of how much of a cheerleader he was for the Iraq war. In 2001, Boot wrote,

Once we have deposed Saddam, we can impose an American‑led, international regency in Baghdad, to go along with the one in Kabul.

Never Trumpers are darlings on talk shows nowadays, which exemplifies what sucks about television news in the USA.

Sunday  07 Feb 2021           comment?

A recent long-ish (about 6500 words) article in The Guardian about Jeff Bezos starts with a description of the first purchases the author made from Amazon (in 2004), which spurred me to look up what my first purchases were. I became an Amazon customer in 1998, in which year I bought seven books. My first Amazon purchase that wasn't a book or audio or video recording was a saw blade I bought in 2006.

The article's author says he gets a smaller royalty when Amazon sells one of his books than when a neighborhood bookstore does.

Saturday  06 Feb 2021           comment?

In an interview last month, economist Nouriel Roubini described a wild scenario about how the final days of Tr--p's presidency might play out. The interviewer wasn't buying it:

	DER SPIEGEL:	That sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory.
	Roubini:	No, it is being discussed behind closed doors in Washington.

That settles it, then.

Friday  05 Feb 2021           comment?

Monday  01 Feb 2021           comment?

Nietzsche said,

Madness is something rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, peoples, ages, it is the rule.

... as seen, not infrequently, in social media.

See also a dream I had a while back.