I’ve been around people who went to top Ivies my whole life. I would say that 25 years ago I would routinely encounter people who were smarter than me who could nimbly shift between analyses based on complex conceptual framing in a range of domains. Now, it seems like the people who are chosen by those institutions are less likely to have those abilities and they’re less capable of saying something interesting or intelligent. What distinguishes them now is that they’re perfectly REHEARSED, they’re able to repeat something that they’ve just heard flawlessly, they’re in the 0.1% of being able to reflect things back. I’m sure part of this is technology and socialization but I also think it’s the selection of people these institutions are choosing - they’re are still plenty of smart people out there, it’s just that they’re way more widely dispersed.

Congrats to my @WhiteSox (and @Cubs) on making the playoffs! Let’s ride a hot streak all the way to the World Series.

LATEST: Pope Leo XIV delivers a rebuke of French secularism at the Élysée with President Macron sitting there. Pope Leo XIV said: “The Christian involved in public life, who acts in the light of his conscience enlightened by faith, cannot be considered a proselytizer or a threat to the unity of the homeland.” Then, aimed squarely at the laïcité that Macron defends: “A just secularism therefore does not consist in excluding religion from the public sphere or from education, but in committing to ensuring that the State and religious institutions dialogue with one another and join their forces in the service of the common good.” More to come at @RealAdVaticanum

Installing the Microsoft Word app on your phone is a silent cry for help.

Outside of Manhattan and Haight-Ashbury and some college campuses, the 60’s were pretty much an extended version of the 50’s until it was suddenly the 70’s.

The Golden Thread has had the great good fortune to have received three reviews that come close to understanding the ambitions of its authors. (If these ambitions were understood by the left they would be busier trying to destroy the book rather than ignoring it in the usual fashion.) The firsr two were by Spencer Klavan in The Claremont Review of Books and by Daniel Bell in The China Review. A third, by Jaspreet Singh Boparai, a writer of extraordinary elegance, has now appeared in First Things, on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, appropriately enough. firstthings.com/reasons-to-b…

I do remember watching every football game that was on. No more. Serious overexposure. I like it but not 4-5 days a week. Baseball is different.

We all appreciate the history and guilt that have pervaded German society for generations. It’s understandable. But at some point the guilt becomes destructive.

Again @NYPDPC shines as she calls to "moral clarity" as we approach the 25th Anniv. of 9/11/01. The NYPD, PAPD & FDNY took unprecedented losses. I will never forget that day and what it was like to be hit by the cloud. NOT a time for gutter politics🙏🇺🇸🙏 nypost.com/2026/09/09/us-new…

I miss having access to a well-stocked institutional library. It would be so much nicer to consult print copies of Proclus’ Commentary on the Timaeus or Simplicius’ on Physics IV. But the gates were closed on me.