At the local water park, Klara was standing in line for an activity where you have to cross the pool by stepping on little inflated pontoons while holding yourself up with a cable rope. I stood next to her to make company.

A very young lifeguard thought that I was queuing up for the activity. To warn me that my age was inappropriate, he said, “I am sorry, ma’am. I don’t want to presume, and I apologize in advance, but this is for ages 16 and under only.” I congratulated the young man on his exceptional politeness and tact with which he delivered the not-unwelcome message that I was out of my teens.

It’s very encouraging to see this kind of politeness in someone so young. I would have done a much worse job at his age. American children and teenagers are the most polite I’ve seen anywhere.

I’m not familiar with this phenomenon of cheap apartments in very desirable locations that are only open for sale to people on a limited income who can buy the apartment outright for cash:

These properties are called HDFC. You’re not allowed to take out a mortgage on them. And you are not allowed to make over $150,000 a year. The only people I can imagine having $185,000 in cash lying around while not making that much money (for NYC, at least) are crooks. I mean, where do you get that amount in cash on a $150,000 income?

I asked AI, and it confirms the existence of the phenomenon but cannot explain it beyond spooling miles of woke platitudes. Does anybody have any insight into this?

A Freudian would say that the reflecting pool is a symbolic birth canal that is ready to birth liberals into independence and maturity. They are horrified by that possibility. Trump is their symbolic mother, and his efforts to expel them into independent thinking through the symbolic birth canal feel to them like an expulsion from a warm, murky, concealing paradise of gestation into the cruelly transparent clarity of adulthood. They’re trying to destroy the birth canal to prevent this expulsion.

I’m joking, of course, but it’s undeniable that the roots of the liberals’ feelings for Trump are not political but psychological. For a long time, I thought that he was their symbolic daddy. I was wrong. He is their symbolic mommy. Everything begins to make sense when you see it that way.

From an article in The Economist:

European football fans visiting America are discovering the mass affluence of the country’s suburbs. The wealth enticing holidaymakers troubles European elites. America, once a peer, seems to be racing ahead.

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/06/18/europe-buys-the-future-america-builds-it

This is one of the most endearing effects of the World Cup travel. Europeans are discovering America and seeing what is possible. They will take this inspiration back home with them and will try to turn things around there. The standard of living in Europe is purposefully tampered down by extremely high taxation. A pernicious belief in the possibility or desirability of equality is forcing Europe to lag behind its own potential.

I’m weeping, my friends. This is too good:

Is somebody paying her to validate the worst stereotypes of the female sex and of race?

I would love to hear from people who still plan to take Candace seriously after the two perfect sentences of the quoted post. I’ll make it easier by pretending that the third sentence is not there at all, because noticing it feels too cruel.

Speaking of older people, isn’t it annoying how they always play their music on loudspeakers in public transport and throw soda cans on the floor?

We are always one election away from this kind of propaganda coming back to us again.

Anybody here read Ernst Jünger? He was one of Rafael Chirbes’s favorite writers and one of his main literary influences. I do everything I can to avoid reading about the World Wars, but if it’s really worth it from the literary point of view, I do it.

It’s interesting that Chirbes saw himself as very left-wing his whole life, but all of his favorite authors were of deeply conservative sensibilities. It makes sense because I wouldn’t be interested in spending so much time on a standard leftist prattler, but it goes to show that self-awareness is the rarest of gifts.

Why is AI writing so different from good writing?

Rafael Chirbes says that there is no good writing unless you manage to bring together two words that had never been together before, had never spent much time in each other’s company. That’s the kernel of good writing. That’s what makes it worthwhile.

AI does the exact opposite. Its entire operating principle is reiterating what was said before.

The developments of modern medicine created a need for old-age pensions. People live longer and can now count on two decades or more of life when they can no longer work but still need to cover their living expenses.

For some strange reason, we are acting as if the same medicine that made old-age pensions necessary will not develop any further. Isn’t it more reasonable to assume that medicine will keep developing and turn old age pensions into a short-lived curiosity?

All developed countries, without exception, are basing their long-term policy on the belief that the future will be the exact replica of the present in every possible way. Entire cultures are being thrown away for the goal of preserving these old-age pensions. There is zero evidence that this cultural holocaust will actually help do that. Neither is there any evidence that we have exhausted medical and scientific progress.

This is not an old post. It’s from today:

What do you think? Somebody is trying to get the royal family in trouble? Show them up as cruel dweebs who mock the suffering of the people? Nobody in the royal family actually writes this. This is an employee who can have all sorts of motivations.