Is it plausible that a billionaire paid no taxes for a period of several years? Yep. Totally. See all that stuff I wrote above about the complicated tax code and how it is an accountant’s sacred duty to take advantage of all the stupid laws congress has passed to save their client’s money? Pretty much that. It has happened many times before, and it will happen many times again.
One thing that’s really unfair about our tax system is that it is rigged in favor of people who have more resources. Government meddling makes it more costly to conduct business. The more complicated the regulatory burden, the more smaller companies can’t compete. Make the laws complicated enough and the only companies that stay in business are the ones who can afford to pay for twenty guys like me. (my last regular accounting job paid extremely well, and nearly everything I did was jump through government mandated hoops, filling out government mandated paperwork which nobody in the government would probably ever read)
Trump has those resources. I bet he’s got a room full of accountants, and their leader is probably a grizzled old CPA with an eye patch and a raven who sits on his shoulder. The raven also has an eye patch and an accounting degree. This man has wrestled bears, and he’s going to take advantage of every tax break in the US Code for his client, and do so gleefully, knowing that many of those laws were signed by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
On the other side, you know damned good and well that the IRS has sent their most fearsome auditor against him. This man sold his soul to the devil, and then fined the devil for failing to list that soul as a depreciable asset. When he shows up to audit your company, he appears a flash of fire and brimstone, as a Finnish death metal band plays his theme song. He is an auditor bereft of mercy, compassion, or pity, and beneath his leathery wings serve a legion of IRS goblins, who will crawl into every nook and cranny of the Trump Corporation’s P&L looking for errors, and if a mouse so much as shits a turd large enough to unbalance that ledger, there will be hell to pay.
Is it unfair that rich guys can employ Gandalf level CPAs and take advantage of more complicated tax laws, while regular people use TurboTax? Yep. But in the meantime, as long as those tax laws are there, the rich guys would be utter fools not to take advantage of them.
Larry Correia, “No, You Idiots. That’s Not How Taxes Work – An Accountant’s Guide To Why You Are A Gullible Moron”, Monster Hunter Nation, 2020-09-28.
October 4, 2026
QotD: Auditors and the taxation system
October 3, 2026
QotD: How to besiege a trace italienne fortress
At the same time, this shift back towards defensive stalemate didn’t lead towards more fragmentation – as the castle had – because trace italienne fortresses were too expensive for any individual aristocrat to build merely to protect his house. Not merely because of the massive fortifications themselves, but the large garrisons they required, either of full-time soldiers or town militia, which were simply beyond the resources of what was left of the old medieval aristocracy. Indeed, warfare in this period (both offensive and defensive) largely proved to be beyond the resources of Europe’s newly centralizing states; the Spanish crown, for instance, went bankrupt, primarily from military expenses, in 1557, 1560, 1575, 1596, 1607, 1627, 1647 and 1653.
It is part and parcel of the era that as much as building and defending a trace italienne fortress was an exercise in mathematics, so was attacking one. Because the entire point of the fortress is to project firepower – often at great distances (with cannon) – the attacker cannot simply form up outside or just set up their artillery in an open field and begin firing; they’d be cut up by counter-battery fire before they had gotten very far. So the attacker had to set up their own earthworks, which naturally being based on the same principles and weapons as the defender’s, would resemble them.
First, the attacking army would generally set up its own fortified camp, outside of cannon-shot. Because that camp needed to be resistant to enemy attack either from the garrison of a relieving army, it was likely to be built in the same style as a trace italienne fortification, albeit with earthworks and gabions (wicker baskets filled with earth) in place of the heavier stonework of the fort. The attacker then has to isolate their target from help, preventing the defenders from leaving, or supplies or reinforcements from arriving. The act of enclosing a besieged settlement in a wall is called circumvallation (recall our word vallum there; this is “walling around”). The act of constructing a line of outward facing defenses to defend that line from attack by a relieving army from behind is called contravallation. Armies in this period would do both.
The first such line of defenses was often started from the fortified camps and was built effectively out of range of the fort; this was the “first parallel”. Now, by the time this project was well along, both the defenders and the attackers could do some basic calculations. They both might have a sense of how quickly reinforcements could arrive and if they were likely to be large enough to give battle or lift the siege. Both sides also know how long their supplies will last and can probably have a decent guess of how long their opponent’s supplies will last. And at this point, they can both calculate fairly well how many meters of earthwork and trench the attackers can dig per day and how many they need to dig to complete their siege operations.
But – and this is important – no one wants this siege to come down to its conclusive, final assault. The attackers don’t want this: every day their siege army sits out here, it is eating money such that each day wasted besieging this town limits what this army can accomplish overall before supplies and money run out. Moreover, the actual assault is likely to incur very high losses on the attackers, because even with a breach, they have to cross all of that open, fire-swept ground and then force the breach in close combat – and the defenders will know exactly where they are going days in advance. On the other hand, if the defenders make the attackers go through all of that effort, danger and death and lose – and they must assume the attackers wouldn’t have laid siege if they weren’t confident they had enough men to take the breach when it comes to it – then the city would be looted, its populace raped or massacred as the attackers vent their rage on the city. This was, at the time, considered the normal result of holding out, to the point that it seems to have been general practice that it was appropriate to wait something like three days before beginning the process of getting control of an army that had breached a city in this fashion.
So once the attacker has completed that first parallel, he is going to send a message to the garrison, announcing that he has done so and offering them the chance to surrender. The standard terms for such surrender was called the “honors of war” – normally the defenders would be permitted to march out, with its flags flying, bayonets fixed, matches (for their matchlock muskets) lot on both ends and “ball in mouth” (that is, a musketball held in their mouth ready to be swiftly loaded as protection against treachery). The defeated army was generally required to turn over its arms, but generally allowed to march back to their own territory. And finally, a town that surrenders like this might have to pay a ransom, but ought to be immune from pillage. To modern readers, these sorts of rituals seem quaint, like having a battle break for tea in the midafternoon (a thing that, to be clear, did not happen), but in fact these were fairly hard-nosed considerations: generous surrender terms aimed to induce a garrison or town to surrender and so spare the attacker both the time but also the blood of storming the place, because after all the goal here isn’t to destroy the enemy garrison but to get control of the town.
One that first parallel is completed, assuming the defender, upon doing the math, doesn’t decide the matter is hopeless and just give up, the attacker now proceeds to begin digging his works forward to set up advanced firing positions (most of the digging was done at night when enemy artillery couldn’t accurately fire at the work parties); there were typically three parallels, the first two providing protection to the digging works and the third parallel, dug into the glacis, providing the firing position directly into the structure of the fort. Once the cannon were emplaced, the attacker might again report that he was prepared to begin firing but if the defenders would just surrender, we could all skip that nasty business. If not, the attacker’s cannon – now secured in their own trace italienne-style firing positions – would start working on the enemy fortifications in a gunnery duel (since the defender’s guns are firing back). Progress here would mean both demolishing ravelins and other outworks which shielded the main curtain wall, as well as storming assaults on various outworks to take them and deny them to the enemy (Americans may note effectively all of these steps in the Siege of Yorktown (1781), albeit on fast-forward since this was a siege of a fairly small town defended merely by field fortifications rather than a large trace italienne fortress complex). The final option to surrender came once the curtain wall had been breached (there was little use in trying to “rush” the breach since it would take days to produce so everyone knew where the final fight would be). The defender then had the terrible choice of either surrendering or risking the terrible slaughter that would follow if the breach was forced (as it was very likely to be).
This whole process could take a really long time and it involved a lot of digging, but it was almost mechanistic in its push towards success. In a sense, those demands forced European states to develop the sort of state capacity that had been the norm under Rome or in China in order to run this new version of the “big army” siege playbook which demanded such tremendous amounts of work. As I’ve noted elsewhere, sieges of these sorts against large trace italienne complexes could last a long time; Parker (Military Revolution, 13) notes the siege of Breda in 1624 lasted nine months and was fairly short while the siege at Ostend in Flanders in 1601 lasted three years and was fairly long, to give a sense of the range.
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Fortification, Part IV: French Guns and Italian Lines”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2021-12-17.
October 2, 2026
QotD: Ketchup, US vs British
American tomato ketchup is unapologetically sweet – basically a tomato-flavored sugar delivery system that goes perfectly with everything from french fries to scrambled eggs (yes, we do that). It’s thick, rich, and designed to be squeezed with abandon.
British tomato ketchup, I discovered, has more of an edge. Less sweet, more vinegar-forward, with a thinner consistency that actually enhances rather than masks the food it touches.
Heinz may have started in America, but the British version tastes like its more sophisticated cousin who studied abroad and came back with refined tastes.
The real revelation? Many Brits find American tomato ketchup cloyingly sweet, while I initially found British tomato ketchup disappointingly tart. It took a few months of adjustment before I appreciated the more nuanced British approach – though I still secretly prefer the American version on certain foods.
Turns out it’s not just my imagination. American Heinz uses high fructose corn syrup while the British version uses regular sugar, which explains why my taste buds were a bit confused.
Marianne Jennings, “Beyond Ketchup & Ranch Dressing”, An American’s Guide to British Life, 2025-05-25.
October 1, 2026
QotD: The “auction of the empire” – Didius Julianus buys the highest office for himself
The elite unit of imperial bodyguards known as the Praetorian Guard arranged for an army officer named Pertinax to succeed Commodus as Emperor. We know that money played a role; Pertinax offered a tidy sum of 12,000 sestertii each to the guardsmen, but it was done in the more typical way (quietly and behind the scenes). After 87 days in which Pertinax attempted to clean house of Praetorian corruption, the dissatisfied Guard stabbed and beheaded the would-be reformer. That set the stage for an act so brazen in its scope that the next emperor would be remembered primarily for that, and for not much more.
Knowing the Praetorian Guard could be bought, two men appeared at its headquarters and presented themselves as rival claimants for the Roman throne. One was Titus Flavius Sulpicianus, who was the father-in-law of the deceased Pertinax. The other was 60-year-old Didius Julianus, who had distinguished himself in both politics and the military. In his Chronicle of the Roman Emperors, historian Chris Scarre notes,
No attempt was made to hide the nature of the negotiations: the Praetorians stationed heralds on the walls to announce that the position of emperor was up for sale … The bidding went on for some time, but eventually the soldiers’ choice fell on Didius Julianus. He not only bid the higher price, but also warned them that if they elected Sulpicianus they might expect revenge at his hands for the murder of Pertinax.
This notorious “Auction of the Empire”, as Edward Gibbon would call it centuries later, was described by another historian who was alive and writing as it happened, Cassius Dio (155-235 A.D.). In his 80-volume history of Rome, he described the scandalous episode this way:
So when he [Didius Julianus] heard of the death of Pertinax, he hastily made his way to the imperial throne. Then ensued a most disgraceful business and one unworthy of Rome. For, just as if it had been in some market or auction-room, both the city and its entire empire were auctioned off. The sellers were the ones who had slain their previous emperor, and the would-be buyers were Sulpicianus and Didius Julianus, who vied to outbid each other … They gradually raised their bids up to 20,000 sestertii for each soldier. Some of the soldiers would carry word to Julianus, “Sulpicianus offers so much; how much more do you make it?” And to Sulpicianus in turn, “Julianus promises so much; how much more do you raise him?” Sulpicianus would have won the day, being prefect of the city and also the first to name the figure 20,000, had not Julianus raised his bid by a whole 5,000 at one time, shouting the sum out in a loud voice and indicating the amount with his fingers.
Sold! One gigantic empire and the top position in it — for a mere 25,000 sestertii per guardsman, or approximately the value at the time of ten horses.
Upon assuming the mantle of Emperor, Didius Julianus devalued the currency by reducing the precious metal content of Roman coinage. But not even that measure made the price he offered affordable to him. He never fully coughed up what he promised. After 66 days in power, he met the same fate as his predecessor — assassination at the hands of disgruntled Praetorians.
“But what evil have I done?” he is said to have cried with his last words. “Whom have I killed?”
Before the year was over, three other men would attempt to claim the title of Emperor until one man emerged as the unquestioned ruler — Severus.
The Year of the Five Emperors was drenched in power lust, scandal and blood. For the Empire, it was mostly downhill from there. When it fell to foreign invasion in 476, many Romans welcomed the invaders because they figured they couldn’t be worse than their own rulers.
And, sadly, they were probably right.
Lawrence W. Reed, “Didius Julianus: The Roman Emperor Who Bought the Imperial Throne – and Paid With His Life”, Foundation for Economic Education, 2021-08-11.
September 30, 2026
QotD: “Have you ever been surprised to learn that someone was a Leftist?”
It never happens, right? Like vegans and Harvard alums, you never have to wonder if someone is an SJW — they’ll tell you, right off the bat. Usually they don’t even have to tell you; the hair and the tats and the fishing tackle in the face do that. Like putting the “Bernie 2024” sticker on the bumper of the Prius or the Subaru Outback, actually declaring yourself an SJW is overkill. So much so that it’s a cliché — of all the budding shitlords I mentored in my years in academia, none of them “came out” to me because of anything I said or did. It was all the stuff I didn’t say or do — I didn’t spend half of each class period ranting and raving about The Current Thing, which was so unusual that they figured I must be on the other side.
The Left, I think it’s fair to say, enjoys total freedom here in AINO. Total liberty, too, and that’s a distinction we should probably make at some point, but for right now let’s hold fire on that. Whichever one you want to use, though, it’s obvious that the Left have it, with pretty much zero restraint. Nothing is too weird or gross or obnoxious that the Left won’t champion it.
But even more than that, all the traditional restraints on behavior — what we should probably call decorum — have been systematically destroyed, and that’s the heart of what I want to talk about. Since we’re discussing the Left here, let’s use one of their favorite terms: Privilege. I think we can take it as read that there has never been a more privileged person, in any sense of the word “privilege,” in all of human history, than Karen (or her JV version, the Basic College Girl). And what battleaxes they are! Constantly lecturing everyone else about their privilege while plowing through every social situation like a tsunami. Like the Clintons, Karen triumphs because you just can’t believe anyone has the sheer brass-balled audacity to pull the antisocial shit they do.
Have you no shame, madam? At last, have you no shame?
Severian, “On Liberty”, Founding Questions, 2022-10-12.
September 29, 2026
QotD: Origins of modern Wicca
One thing that we can be confident that Wicca does not draw upon, however, is a goddess religion that survived the introduction of first the Indo-European *Dyḗus ph₂tḗr in the Bronze Age, and then the Semitic Jesus Christ in late antiquity, before being mostly suppressed in the “burning times” of the early modern era.1 Neo-pagans are not the (great-great-great …) granddaughters of the witches you didn’t burn in the 16th and 17th centuries; rather, they are the granddaughters of upper class romantics whose religious innovations in the early to mid-20th century are best characterized as “creative synthesis”.
Ronald Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon tells the story of the precursors, invention, and development of Wicca. Much of that history can be encapsulated in the mythic genealogy of “Black Annis”, an occasional pagan deity. There was a real medieval anchoress named Agnes Scott who served the church near Leicester and is buried at Swithland Church. She was venerated locally as a Christian saint, but following the Protestant Reformation was reconceptualized as an ogress. Then the 20th century crank archaeologist T.C. Lethbridge interpreted Black Annis as pagan survivalism of the “crone” aspect of the great mother goddess and a corruption of the Celtic goddess Anu. Finally, some modern neo-pagan communities were inspired by Lethbridge’s work to adopt veneration of Black Annis into their liturgy. As Hutton notes, “The gentle and pious Agnes seems therefore to have been turned first into a local saint, then into a local demon, next into a Celtic goddess, and finally into a witch goddess; and all the while her bones have rested in apparent peace at Swithland”.
The changing reputation of Agnes/Annis/Anu reflects a few processes that are common throughout much of the intellectual roots of neo-paganism. You start with the idiosyncratic cruftiness of medieval Catholicism, then Protestants derogate the cult of the saints, feast days, etc. as idolatrous — indeed, practically pagan. Fast forward to 1900, give or take a few decades, and an intellectual with dubious expertise projects pagan survivalism onto historical or ethnographic data. And then finally neo-pagans use the folklorist’s imagined version of the past as inspiration for a “revived” myth and liturgy.
Gabriel Rossman, “GUEST REVIEW: The Triumph of the Moon, by Ronald Hutton”, Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf, 2025-12-01.
- The one aspect of this myth that might be true is a pre-Indo-European goddess religion. The idea that Stone Age female figurines like the Venus of Willendorf represent a goddess religion is plausible but unprovable, given that the figures predate writing by about 26,000 years and so we have no literary evidence to contextualize the archaeology. But even saying that the Neolithic goddess cult was possible but not settled fact, as archaeologist Peter Ucko did in the 1960s, was enough to upset Murray, who “sent Ucko a furious letter, informing him that he had no right to speak about the goddess, because he was, first, far too young, and, second, a man”. While there might have been widespread neolithic European goddess worship, all other aspects of the “Murray thesis” — the idea that witches executed circa the Protestant Reformation were practicing a pre-Christian goddess religion — are demonstrably false. Hutton notes the falsity of the Murray thesis incidentally in Triumph of the Moon and argues against it at length in his later book, The Witch.
September 28, 2026
QotD: “This is revealed preferences with an erection”
As far back as we have records, and into the present day, anywhere that women are sold as pleasure slaves blonde blue-eyed girls with big racks have been the most in demand.
Our most extensive documentation on this is from the Ottoman Empire. Their slave-takers raided as far north as the west coast of Ireland and even Iceland because a handful of Sidneys could fund years-long expeditions — ships, weapons, provisions, hundreds of men — from the price they fetched on the auction block. And net a healthy profit, too.
But the pattern is everywhere — cross cultural, cross-racial. Evolutionary biologists think they know why: chicks who look like le Sweeney are radiating signals of youth and immune-system effectiveness and general reproductive fitness. Blonde hair fades with age, clear skin doesn’t hide blemishes that reveal vulnerability to infection, and I hope nobody reading this needs any education about breast-to-waist-to-hip ratios. If you do, ask an AI for an explainer.
I don’t know that anybody’s explained the allure of blue eyes satisfactorily yet. We know they’re a huge win in the sexual selection game, because of the rapidity with which they propagated. A single point mutation, probably less than 10,000 years ago in Europe, spread like wildfire despite the fact that lack of melanin granules in the iris is recessive.
There’s not much that can reveal the instinctive desires of men more clearly than what they’re willing to pay to own women who light up their limbic systems. This is revealed preferences with an erection.
It’s not just yesterday, either. Every few years somebody busts a semi-covert slave market in some shithole like Mauritania or Afghanistan and it’s the same old story. The highest value merchandise is always blonde white girls, usually trafficked from Eastern Europe.
So, yes, when old-school racists ranted about darkies lusting for the flower of white womanhood, they were not wrong. Because, well, basically everybody lusts for the flower of white womanhood. It seems to be wired in.
ESR, Twitter, 2025-07-30.
September 27, 2026
QotD: “Friction” in military actions
Bret Devereaux, “Miscellanea: A Very Short Glossary of Military Terminology”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2022-03-25.
September 26, 2026
QotD: The game of Marbles
Nevertheless, we scoured the tracks for endless hours, turning over every likely pebble that caught the sun. No steelies. I did amass a small collection of spikes that had worked their way loose from the ties. Never did figure a use for them. But they were cool.
The game was marbles. Way we played it in upper Michigan was to draw a chalk circle on the cement or scratch one on the sand with a stick, sometimes we even used a length of string. The battleground was set. The players approached cautiously if their stock was low or boldly if their marble bag brimmed.
One boy against one boy. Man against man. A test of skill and mental grit. Incidentally, only boys played against boys, girls against girls: this was back in the day when adults didn’t burst a spleen for kids noticing the obvious differences in the sexes. Besides, boys were daring and cavalier. They were out for conquest. Girls would sometimes — this still baffles me — agree to play to a draw! Even if one girl would outright win she wouldn’t claim her prize. Bizarre creatures.
First boy, if he was a pro, placed his middle finger against his thumb and then snapped it at his marble, aiming to smack it into his opponent’s. If he hit it, he got to keep it. No time outs, no I-wasn’t-readies, no whimpering. Newcomers and cowards could be identified by the anemic way they smacked their marble, say by giving it no more than a half-hearted push with their forefinger.
Strategy was obvious. If you were the better shooter, you attacked attacked attacked. Go right after the other guy. Intimidate him. Like Nelson, ignore all subtleties and blaze away. Cagier boys took advantage of the braggarts and only pretended to be cautious. They let their opponents open with a bold shot or two, answering with a shot away as if in retreat, then when the other boy’s shot would miss and stop close by, the jig was up.
And that was the problem. Too bold and your shots would come close, too close. Countless times the marbles would stop an inch away. It was a goner. This is why it made sense to shoot hard; over-shooting was hardly a risk. Unless you in a sudden-death match where shooting outside the lines meant an automatic loss.
Most of us neither lost too many nor gained too many. But a few kids were easy pickings. Every day they’d come with a new small bag (these were sold in grocery and “dime” stores) and lose them. Rich kids.
Unless by prior agreement, only even matches were allowed. Cat’s eye against cats eye were the lowest, entry-level bouts. Cats’ eyes, for those monumentally ignorant of Americana, are the clear marble with the squiggly, colorful aberration running through the center. These were the general stock, like ten-year-old used cars; useful, but unloved. Why, you could find spare cat’s eye rolling around behind the home room teacher’s desk. What counted was quantity.
Perries, probably a corruption of puries, solid colored beauties. These were always just a shade smaller than the cat’s eyes. Perries, though coveted, had a tendency to chip, sometimes even crack open when hit hard. Clears were solid glass, no color. Steelies were polished ball bearings. I only ever saw two of them. Not the railroad kind, but small ones from who-knows-where. They were said to be unbeatable, which is why we latched onto any rumor of a source.
Then came the boulders, the double-sized version of the normal marble. One of these was worth five to ten of the regular kind, depending on availability. Boulder-on-boulder matches were always closely attended. They were rare, too, especially when they featured perries. (I have since learned boulders are called “shooters” in other areas. But all our marbles were shooters.)
We used to empty our marble bags and compare, holding our treasures up to the light for the kind of close scrutiny used by gemologists sizing up wedding rings. Oddities such as pea-sized perries occasionally showed up. These were said to be from China, then still a mysterious land.
I don’t guess kids play marbles anymore. Unless there’s a marble “app” for their cell phones. But it now makes sense that my favorite adult game is petanque.
William M. Briggs, “Marbles!”, Science Is Not The Answer, 2026-06-23.
September 25, 2026
QotD: The whole point of imposing tariffs is to raise prices
Think on it. So, those dastardly foreigners are better, or cheaper, or subsidised, or just plain swarthy johnnies who are selling to us and thereby stealing the crust from the mouths of the more expensive (or less good etc) proper British producers. So, we now impose a tax at the border. This makes those products from swarthy johnnies more expensive. So, people will buy fewer swarthy and more good and honest British.
This also enables the good British to raise their prices and so make a profit.
So, what actually happens is that the British consumer gets screwed for the benefit of British capitalists. Not quite what I’d recommend as a policy but that’s the point and the intention. Tariffs raise the domestic price of the thing, that’s the reason why.
Tim Worstall, “But Increasing Prices Is The Very Point Of Tariffs”, It’s all obvious or trivial except …, 2026-06-18.
September 24, 2026
QotD: The perpetual progressive underdogs
To the autist, each car must be inspected in detail, with full attention … and while the autistic’s attention is laser-focused on one particular parked car – “1998 Ford Taurus, midnight blue, left front tire is a little low, right taillight out, bumper sticker near muffler”, etc. — he fails to notice the moving car that hits him.
As opposed to the non-autistic, who is capable of “abstracting” that situation into a realistic threat assessment. He can’t even give you a ballpark guess of how many parked cars are in the lot, much less any details about any of them, because he has abstracted them out: “a bunch of parked cars” = no threat, so his attention is free to roam around looking for moving cars.
I instinctively want to argue against this, because it appears to me that Leftists are nothing but abstraction. They don’t see individuals; they see huge identity groups. That’s why they see an anti-feminist woman or a conservative homosexual or whatever as not really X. It makes sense to them, somehow, to say that Amy Coney Barrett isn’t really a woman, Clarence Thomas isn’t really black, and so on.
[…]
The non-autistic sees [a child’s drawing of a train as] a rectangle, two wheels, some lines underneath, and thinks “train,” because he’s boiled it down to the essentials — a train is a wheeled vehicle that moves on tracks. That’s good enough to cover pretty much all “train” situations; we can add or subtract details as needed to get to this or that particular train (e.g. electric vs. steam), or a wheeled vehicle which moves on tracks that’s not a train (e.g. a rollercoaster).
So, applied to people: I see a black man walking towards me on the street and I have one set of assumptions in my head. First I see just “person”; then I realize it’s a man; then I realize it’s a black man; then I realize it’s an elderly black man; then I realize it’s Clarence Thomas. All the while I’m dialing in both my perceptions and my behavior — I’m not at much physical risk from an elderly man, and I’m at nearly zero risk from Clarence Thomas, specifically, so I modify my behavior. When I was still just at the “black male” stage of the recognition process, I behaved very differently.
If I’m reading Zorost correctly, the autistic would do something like the reverse. He wouldn’t be able to make any judgments until he’d fully inspected the individual man in front of him at close range and verified that yes, this is Clarence Thomas. And then the confusion kicks in, because he — the autistic — has memorized the rule “black man = Liberal” and here’s Clarence Thomas. Error 404.
Severian, “Why Are They Always Underdogs?”, Founding Questions, 2022-09-07.
September 23, 2026
QotD: The EU as a modern Habsburg Empire
The irony is, of course, that Germany is once again by far the strongest power on the continent. Its interests are complex and no doubt contradictory: it wants the rest of Europe to continue to import its goods, but it does not want to fund, or mutualise, the debts that allow it to do so. The southern countries would like to either to mutualise the debts, or inflate them away by debasing the currency, but Germany will allow neither of these solutions to the imbalances within Europe. There would be no better way to re-awake German nationalism than follow the prescriptions of the southern nations; on the other hand, resentment of Germany will grow if they are not followed.
The author acknowledges the problems within Europe in his last chapter, up till which he has treated Europe as if it were one big happy family with a population gaily marching in unison behind its leadership. The truth is quite otherwise, which is why an example must be made of Britain. But the likelihood is that the more integration there is, the greater will be the tensions, both between and within countries. There is a class within countries that benefits mightily from the present arrangements, which in my opinion explains the paradox of Catalan, Flemish, and Scottish nationalism: for all these nationalisms are firm adherents to the ideal of European Union, namely a dilution of national sovereignty even greater than that which their nations already possess. Again to put it crudely, the leadership of these movements want their place not in the sun, but at the trough. They are pied pipers to their populations.
The book ends by quoting that old Mephistophelian, François Mitterand, to the effect that “Nationalism means war”. And of course this is true if by nationalism is meant an exaggerated and militant love of one’s own country and a hatred of, or disdain for, all other countries, particularly neighbouring ones. Yet at the same time, nation states — at least some of them — have been the only large-scale states able durably to protect the freedom of their populations. Moreover, if nationalism means war, it does not follow that supranationalism means peace. The European Union may be a Yugoslavia in the making, without a Tito to hold it together. As José Manuel Barroso, once President of the European Commission, former Maoist student leader and then Goldman Sachs executive (the thirst for power being the golden thread that runs through this diverse career) put it, Europe — using the word to mean the European Union, which is now more or less standard — is an empire, though of a new kind.
Perhaps not so new, in fact: a kind of Habsburg Empire without the charm and aesthetic sensibility. From the right it is attacked as a socialist enterprise, from the left as a neo-liberal one: corporatist is the word for it, that happy union between regulatory bureaucracy and large corporations.
Theodore Dalrymple, “European Empire, Fractured”, Law & Liberty, 2020-11-10.
September 22, 2026
QotD: Organized activities for children versus informal play
I didn’t ask why. I wish I had, because I’m sincerely curious — these were busy, active kids, actually in the process of racing around the playground with their buddies while the adults chatted, so it’s not as though they needed organized sports to keep them from merging with the couch cushions — but at the time it seemed rude and pushy so I changed the subject. Now, obviously not everyone is like this mom: some people, including Tim Carney, really do love sports and delight in sharing that love. But the truth is, people are obsessed with signing their kids up for stuff. Carney calls it the Travel Team Trap, and it’s probably most evident in youth sports culture, but it shows up everywhere. Your kid likes to write? Find a creative writing class! Having fun with chess? Quick, hire a tutor! My local rec center even offers courses in Dungeons & Dragons, taught by a real live professional nerd, because apparently eating Doritos in your mom’s basement while your friends mock you for touching the Sphere of Annihilation isn’t good enough any more.
And it’s a vicious cycle, because all these official activities crowd out informal play. If the artsy kids in your neighborhood are taking a musical theater class half an hour away, there’s no one to join your kids in pulling out the dress-ups and staging a drama of their own. If everyone is off at soccer practice, you can’t meet up at the park to kick the ball around. Sorry, Zerubbabel can’t come over and play Legos this week, he’s got his STEM Makers class on Wednesday and then Thursday afternoon is junior robotics team … Soon even the families who want a more relaxed, unprogrammed life are signing their kids up for things because it’s the only way they’ll ever see their friends.
There’s nothing wrong with formal instruction in its place, especially for things where technique really matters: the world needs basketball coaches and piano teachers, too. And sometimes it’s just fun! A big stage with lights and music and real costumes scratches an itch that Mom’s old prom dress and a dinosaur mask (“Velociraptorella”, currently in previews off-off-off-Broadway) just can’t touch. But when we regard these things as potentially interesting and entertaining, rather than absolutely vital to our children’s well-being, we can make sane tradeoffs about them. A day-trip to the awesome museum in a neighboring city is also potentially interesting and entertaining, but nobody thinks you’re a bad mom if you spend the weekend doing something else.
And what’s more, the push for legible achievement over experience, without regard for what’s good for your family — or even, apparently, whether your kids like it — robs them of the opportunity to motivate and direct their own lives. Basketball practice three times a week surely does more for your jump shot than a pickup game at the local park, but in the long term the ability to take ownership of your time, make and keep plans with your friends, sort out interpersonal disagreements, etc. are going to be a lot more useful. (And, sorry, I’m still stuck on this D&D thing: the threat of your friends losing interest and wandering off to play foosball instead is a much greater incentive to become a good DM than anything you could learn in a class.)
But it’s not actually surprising that people parent like this, because it’s how they grew up: today’s moms and dads are yesterday’s Organization Kids.1 Their image of the good life is tallying up achievement points on some great celestial board. And no wonder they’re desperate to tally up points for their kids, too: they think their futures depend on it! In fact, every time I bring this up, someone tells me that Harvard is full of kids whose parents drove themselves crazy coordinating travel sports schedules and private school dropoffs and chess tutors — all of which is true, and some of which is probably even causal. (Nobody appreciates achievement points tallied up on a great celestial board like a college admissions office.) But a lot of it is also because that’s how smart, conscientious, upper-middle-class parents are expected to raise their kids, and the best way to get into Harvard is to be the offspring of smart, conscientious, upper-middle-class people. (It also helps if they’re neither white nor Asian.)
Jane and John Psmith, “JOINT REVIEW: Family Unfriendly, by Timothy P. Carney”, Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf, 2024-10-14.
- I hadn’t reread the article since I was in college, but revisiting it now it’s an amazing artifact. “No one is political, no one protests.” Things change!
September 21, 2026
QotD: Military doctrine
Bret Devereaux, “Miscellanea: A Very Short Glossary of Military Terminology”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2022-03-25.
September 20, 2026
QotD: Brexit – the process is the punishment
Well, yes and no. There is little doubt that a large part of the political class, the upper bureaucracy and the intelligentsia did their very best to prevent, or at least obstruct, Britain’s departure from the European Union. The Prime Minister who followed Mr. Cameron, Mrs. May, was herself in favour of remaining, and yet she was put in charge of the negotiations on the British side. This was like putting an ardent pacifist in charge of an army, and indeed she managed to negotiate a deal that (from the British point of view) was the worst of both worlds.
It should have been obvious from the first that Brexit was an existential question for the European Union, as well as for Britain, of course. If Britain prospered, or simply failed to suffer greatly, after Brexit, this would have been a disaster for the European Union, in the populations of which there was significant and growing scepticism of or opposition to the “European Project” (it is the only project I know whose end is never stated, though I suspect it is a superstate in whose administration politics in the normal sense of elections, appeals to public opinion, etc., are not to be allowed to intrude). An example had to be made, and in effect has been made. No other member state will want to go through what Britain has gone through these last four years. The light must not be worth the candle.
Theodore Dalrymple, “European Empire, Fractured”, Law & Liberty, 2020-11-10.
