I took an Oxy and now have a hard time figuring out what is real. For instance, I just got an email from Uber with the subject line “Drag Shows on Demand Return.” I love drag shows with an uncommon passion but I can’t figure out what Uber has to do with them. Do they deliver performers in their cars, and if so, where do I sign up?

God, I miss drag shows. For some reason, I only ever watch them in Toronto.

Yes, I’m loopy. My surgery had to be rescheduled to tomorrow because I was in great pain, so I bought a thousand-page true crime novel to entertain me in recovery.

Deneen says in his book that the greatest threat to the environment is that liberalism* transformed the meaning of freedom. From the original meaning of “cultivating oneself with the goal of not being enslaved by one’s appetites” freedom acquired the opposite meaning of “recognizing no constraints on the satisfaction of one’s boundless appetites.”

As students learn on the first day of class in Economics 101, human needs are endless and can never be satisfied. Humans will not stop wanting to consume more until they eat up the whole planet. Deneen says that the only thing that will help the environment is for people to accept that the greatest freedom is not to desire endlessly but to be free from the tyranny of unbounded desires.

* Obviously, he doesn’t mean liberalism in the narrow US sense of “whoever opposes the US Republicans” but in the wider sense of the great emancipatory project that began in the 18th century and that aimed to liberate humans from political tyranny (think modern democracy), tyranny of nature (think antibiotics, heating, the AC), tyranny of their their bodies (think birth control, modern dentistry, reproductive assistance), etc.

Mr. Trump is now threatening to tax nearly the total value of goods — more than $505 billion — that China sent to the U.S. last year. His stance has drawn a rebuke from retailers, tech companies and manufacturers.

Environmentalists should be peeing themselves with delight. This is the biggest thing that happened to advance their cause in forever. Consumer goods prices go up, people are forced to buy less, and reduce the speed at which they are devouring the planet.

Obviously, this would be an unintended effect, but who cares? The important thing is that nobody has come up with anything else that stands the slightest chance of curbing consumption.