Pío Moa is insanely biased in favor of Francisco Franco. But mainstream narratives are even more insanely biased against. One would think that half a century after Franco’s death we could all calm down and discuss him without foaming at the mouth. But that’s not happening, and one has to scratch one’s way to some semblance of knowledge about the actual facts by reading different accounts and finding the middle ground between the extremes.

The glaringly obvious thing that nobody in Spain is ready to discuss is why the country was stuck between Franco and Stalinism and had to make that choice in a civil war. Why did things get so extreme? Why is the reaction to these events so overinflated almost a hundred years later?

Extreme forms of attachment to the past are an avoidance mechanism aimed at hiding from the present. This is true for societies as well as individuals. In Spain it’s not possible to discuss the civil war and the dictatorship in a dispassionate manner. People freak out and start spluttering. Pío Moa might be wrong on a bunch of things but at least he’s trying to have a normal conversation.

This is what they call a shrimp salad in Chicago:

One isn’t spoiled for choice in airports but this habit of offering a mountain of unshredded and unwieldy greenery is beyond my comprehension. How is a person supposed to stuff it into themselves? And why are the actual vegetables so marginalized? Are they the conservative minority of this dish?

I love airport exhibits because they are often very philosophical. An airport is a typical liminal space where you are in between different parts of your life, and this makes it the perfect place to think.

The Lambert St Louis airport has a photo exhibit that follows a real-life mystery. A cache of old photos was found at an estate sale in St Charles, MO. It featured a couple that, in the 1950s, traveled the world in a way that few people traveled back then. The photographer who found the cache placed them online and asked people to help him find out the identity of the missing couple. Who were they? Do they have any descendants? And why was the evidence of their unusual lives discarded like this?

Internet sleuths pored over the images and finally identified the adventurous couple. The final image of the exhibit features a terse message that solves the mystery.

“Hi. I’m their niece. I sold the photos at an estate sale” the message states.

The exhibit offers a very definitive answer to the question that rages on social media these days. Is it worth giving up on progeny to be able to travel more? The sadness of Harry and Edna’s discarded existence is answer enough.

I watched Tucker Carlson’s discussion about AI with Kevin O’Leary. I use AI very little and wouldn’t notice it if tomorrow it disappeared completely. Plus, I’m amenable to Carlson’s argument that data centers are ugly and loud. But in this discussion, I believe O’Leary won. Not that he’s extremely bright or anything. One thing he said was so patently ridiculous, I thought I’d never stop laughing. O’Leary clearly has sinusitis and speaks like an elephant with a clamp on his trunk. To illustrate the beauties of AI, he explained that he recently got a full-body scan that is now much cheaper because of AI. The scan revealed to him that he has a sinus infection. Which anybody not completely deaf and blind could have told him for free.

Still, Tucker didn’t manage to vanquish even this level of discourse. He spent an inordinate amount of time developing the favorite argument of Michael Moore that tax breaks for large companies are bad. Or that Google is not more moral than China. Compared to this accumulation of silliness, even O’Leary with his AI sinusitis sounded more intelligent.

It was a close match with O’Leary holding a slight edge.

I don’t understand why every airline in America — public and private — doesn’t have @Starlink. It’s incredible. You can make FaceTime calls with better reception anywhere in the world 35k feet up in air than most reception on ground. WiFi on planes is infuriatingly bad. Still.

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) May 15, 2026

Only an absolute moron and a decided enemy of humanity communicates by any means that bypasses writing from a plane. Aside from that, it’s a surefire way of losing faith in humanity if you are forced to find out the kind of stupid things people talk about on their FaceTime calls.

Everywhere we go, Klara brings her notebook and a pencil and works on her memoir which at this point is somewhere in volume 15. She writes stories, draws pictures, and creates long-division exercises that she finds very entertaining.

People sometimes ask me, “How did you get her to do this?” But I didn’t. I never suggested this activity. All I did was not buy her a tablet or a phone. The words “screen time” have never been used in our house. I don’t have this problem because I never created it in the first place.

At this point, she is old enough that I had to explain why she doesn’t have a screen to stare at. So I explained. She understood my explanation and liked it. You don’t have to quit smoking if you never start. You don’t have to lose weight if you never become obese. It’s easier not to cause the problem because then you don’t have to solve it. I highly recommend this course of action to everybody.

I received some questions in the anonymous Q&A:

Have you ever tried to read Kingsnorth’s The Wake?

I really detest historical fiction, so no. And I’m not likely to try. I’d read sci-fi before I read historical fiction, and I have zero interest in sci-fi.

Have you read Lineages of Modernity?

No, and I never heard of it before. Thank you for recommending, I will check it out. I’m currently on a reading spree about the Franco dictatorship, so this will have to wait until I get over that.

What is a suitable therapy for someone who is suicidal?

I assume you aren’t looking for yourself? If it’s somebody else, all I can recommend is removing yourself from that person’s company. If you can’t remove yourself, minimize engagement.

This is not at all wrong:

With the Democrats you get suicidal domestic policies and with the Republicans you get suicidal foreign policies@JRNyquist calls it the race to the bottom. What else can you call it? https://t.co/ug451vAo3I

— onetallorder (@onetallorfour) May 14, 2026

I care much more about domestic policy, so the choice is clear to me. And it’s not that the Dems are good on foreign policy. They suck on it but they suck worse on domestic issues, so it’s not that noticeable how badly they are screwing up overseas. With Republicans, at least you don’t get a total horror show at home.

Franco got married in 1923. He didn’t want to invite his libertine father to the wedding, so his best man was the King of Spain. He participated by proxy, of course.

It took Franco years to get the bride’s father to consent to the marriage because Franco was considered an obscure nobody for a long time. And then all of a sudden the King is his best man. The father-in-law must have felt like a moron.

I’m getting nervous hives when I hear the word talent these days.

The Regulation establishing an EU talent pool is published.

This new platform aims to:
👉 connect non-EU jobseekers with EU employers
👉 tackle labour shortages
👉 enhance competitiveness
👉 ensure fair recruitment across Europe.

🌍 https://t.co/rpH9iPmzBB pic.twitter.com/hjonQNsBbc

— EU Publications (@EUPublications) May 14, 2026

Rapey welfare guzzlers are now “talent.” The cynicism is overwhelming.