MarkFord
This is what happened in Chicago over the Memorial Day weekend:
And if you haven’t seen enough, here are two more clips that will give you a taste for Chicago 2021:
Dancing at Emma’s Wedding
At Emma’s wedding last month, I couldn’t dance because my knee was f-ed up. And I like to dance.
I’m not a good dancer, but I have the ability to imagine myself to be one after two or three tequilas.
I took lessons once, which taught me how to hold and turn my partner, but I never mastered the movements from the hips down. I’m comfortable with slow dancing and versions of the swing – but when it comes to Latin dances, which depend so heavily on hip-foot coordination, I definitely need more training.
Antonio, a partner of mine in various businesses in Nicaragua, explained the problem to me. “You Gringos don’t move your hips. You only move your upper bodies. That makes you look stiff. We Latinos keep our upper bodies quiet while we move our hips.”
He demonstrated, and I could see what he meant. Hip-down vs. hip-up.
I tried to simulate his movements.
“No! No! That’s not it!”
He showed me again. I tried again. He shook his head.
He put his hand to his chin and thought a moment. Then his eyes lit up. He came over to me and held my head still between his big, meaty hands.
“Okay,” he said. “Now dance!”
I tried to dance, but I couldn’t. The best I could do was move my feet a bit, but my hips were frozen. Somehow, unable to move my head, I was also unable to move my hips.
“That’s what’s wrong with you Gringos,” he said.
I didn’t ask what he meant by that.
I would like to learn to dance better than I can because, as I said, I like to dance, and I intend to dance at the next family function.
But at 70, am I too old?
Never Too Old to Dance
At the age of 60, Martha Gellhorn, best known as the third wife of Ernest Hemingway (although she was already an accomplished writer with a brilliant career when she met him) decided she’d learn to dance.
Here’s an excerpt from a letter she wrote to her son Sandy:
Meantime, to make you howl with laughter, I take discotheque dancing lessons, with Mary Hall, grey-haired Mum of Fred Tompkins, from an 18-year-old lassie named Pam. It is funnier than you would credit and I must say it has jogging beat, as exercise. You should see your old Mum solemnly learning steps entitled Funky Broadway, Tighten Up, Pearl, Boogaloo, Shingaling, Stomp. I specially admire that basic gesture, the heart of the matter, which most closely resembles a male dog in the act of procreation. Anything anything to make life here a little less dismal. (Source: Letters Of Note)
No, it’s never too late to start dancing. Here’s a video proving that point…
Some of the best-educated people I’ve met know almost nothing about economics. Some of them think they do because they are literate and read Paul Krugman. In fact they don’t understand even the basics:
- Why economics is fundamentally about human values
- What money is and why it’s one of the most important invention of human history
- The difference between cost and opportunity cost
- Why profit is good for everyone — the business owner, the employees and the consuming public
- How cronyism is different from free market capitalism
- Why freedom is more important than equality
- Why socialism inevitably makes economies poorer
- What government can do and can’t do in terms of building wealth
- etc.
Most of these are macro-economic issues. But economic ignorance can lead to bad decision making on a personal level and that will almost inevitably lead to making one’s life more dismal for oneself and one’s family.
How economically intelligent are you?
Here’s an essay and a mini-course that will give you a good idea.
Here’s a great essay by Bill Bonner (“Zombies Everywhere”) that explains why the entire US economy is on the decline, with GDP growth rates now at their lowest levels since the Great Depression.
It starts like this:
Why do empires collapse? And why do economies decay?
Keeping it all very simple…
A society prospers or declines depending on how much of its vitality is engaged in providing useful goods and services…
… compared to how much is spent grifting… stealing… politicking… and wasting time and savings on zombie companies, wars, and dead-end investments.
And appearances can be misleading…
To read the rest of Bill’s essay, click here.
And click here [LINK] for an easy-to-understand introduction to economics from the Mises Institute. The trailer is mediocre, but the lessons are very good.
Amazon Buys MGM: So What?
The public narrative is this:
On May 26, Amazon announced it had cut a deal to buy Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) for $8.45 billion. MGM has a catalog of 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows, which have collectively won more than 180 Academy Awards and 100 Emmys. This is Amazon’s biggest move yet into the conventional entertainment industry.
The deeper story – the one that few people are talking about – is this:
The entertainment industry is a subset of the Information Industry. (Another subset is fashion, travel, and luxury goods of all kind.) And Amazon is just one of a handful of companies (including Apple, Facebook, and Google) that are gradually but steadily dominating it. Information is power. And with power comes control. These businesses are acquiring near complete sovereignty over their customers. They are fast becoming nations of their own. Digital states that may equal or bypass nation states.
And speaking of Amazon’s relationship with its customers… According to the company’s website, “Amazon’s mission is to be Earth’s most customer-centric company.”
Well, I was taking one of my rabbit-hole runs through YouTube the other night and came upon several examples of Amazon delivery people who don’t seem to have gotten that message.
In this first one, an Amazon delivery driver is caught stealing the packages he’s supposed to be delivering:
Here, a driver in Miami Beach punches a 73-year-old customer after he’s told he can’t enter the building without a mask:
And here, a driver beats the crap out of a 67-year-old woman in San Francisco:
The Beauty of a Good Conversation
“Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” – Oscar Wilde
Earnest and well-meaning interlocutors are the worst. They talk about everything that matters in the most fervently boring way.
Next to them on my psychic-pain-endurance scale are kind and sensible talkers, people that speak incessantly about feelings – theirs or yours. I won’t deny it. I have feelings. At least as many as the next guy. But most feelings are ephemeral. And conventional. Unless they rise to the level of the pathological, they just aren’t special, no matter how special they may feel.
Then there are the memoirists – those people that can’t stop talking about everything and anything that happened to them since you last saw them. The dullness of their conversation is equaled only by their obliviousness to the unfortunate recipients of their chatter. Can’t they see that no one cares?
I do enjoy most business conversations. But that’s because there is almost always an objective and a time limitation. They feel more like contests than conversations. Let’s see who can get to the solution first!
I also enjoy philosophical conversation – when it is sincerely had, which is rarely the case.
Most conversations are social in nature, and when it comes to partners in social conversation, I look for wit and intelligence mixed with a good dose of irreverence and a soupçon of disdain. Those are the key ingredients in gourmet-level banter.
I’ve spent a fair number of hours reading the heralded literary conversationalists of the past. There are dozens of them. But the two I’d most like to bring back to life, for a little dinner party, would be Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker. Here is a sampling of each:
Oscar Wilde
“I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.”
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”
“A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”
“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”
“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”
“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.”
“A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.”
“The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.”
“Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
Dorothy Parker
“The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.”
“That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.”
“I hate writing, I love having written.”
“Those who have mastered etiquette, who are entirely, impeccably right, would seem to arrive at a point of exquisite dullness.”
“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
“The only dependable law of life – everything is always worse than you thought it was going to be.”
“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
“Of course I talk to myself. I like a good speaker, and I appreciate an intelligent audience.”
“A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika.”
“Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship.”
“His voice was as intimate as the rustle of sheets.”
“She can sit up and beg, and she can give her paw – I don’t say she will, but she can.”
“Wuhan Lab Theory No Longer a Conspiracy According to Biden and the NYT”
When I was covering the upcoming national elections in September, I predicted that most of the scary stories about COVID that were ubiquitous back then would dissipate if Biden was elected.
The reason: It was generally agreed that the best chance of getting Trump out of office would be to scare people about the virus and blame him for “mishandling” it.
That’s exactly what happened. Almost overnight, the stories printed and broadcast about the virus turned from frightening to hopeful. And last month, a senior executive at CNN admitted that the station’s policy was just that.
A parallel narrative accused Trump of spreading a completely unfounded conspiracy theory when he suggested the virus might have started at the Wuhan Institute of Virology – a top-security lab that allegedly performed gain-of-function research (GoFR).
Now, 15 months later and six months into Biden’s first term, the “plandemic” theory is no longer a lunatic idea. It’s a genuine possibility, according to a growing number of US scientists and health officials.
This should be an embarrassment for Biden and team, but his handlers have spun him a narrative that makes him the hero. Here is part of the script they wrote for him:
“After I became President, in March, I had my National Security Advisor task the Intelligence Community to prepare a report on their most up-to-date analysis of the origins of COVID-19, including whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident,” Biden said on May 26, adding that he wanted intelligence agents to “redouble” their efforts in finding the origin of the virus.
“As of today,” he said, “the US Intelligence Community has ‘coalesced around two likely scenarios’ but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question.” Then, quoting from their report, he said, “’While two elements in the IC leans toward the former scenario and one leans more toward the latter – each with low or moderate confidence – the majority of elements do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other.’”
In this NYT opinion piece, Ross Douthat acknowledges the bias in the media against the lab theory and explains why it matters.
And here’s an explanation of why Biden tread lightly.
Art Thief Nabbed!
German police nabbed Abdul Majed Remmo, the fifth and final suspect in the 2019 burglary of Dresden, Germany’s Green Vault Museum. The 22-year-old is the twin brother of Mohammed Remmo, who was arrested last year.
The haul, estimated to be worth $1.1 billion, included the 49-carat Dresden White Diamond, an elaborate sword with more than 700 diamonds, a diamond hat clasp comprised of 15 large diamonds and more than 100 small ones (made in the 1780s and worn to galas by Frederick Augustus III), and an Order of the White Eagle Breast Star with a 20-carat diamond at its center.
According to the reports I’ve read, the operation was fairly low-tech: “The burglars started a fire that disarmed the security system and climbed in through a window.”
If you’re as interested as I am in this sort of thing, here’s a link to the 25 greatest art heists in recent history.
What to Do?
Another Difficult Conversation
After the Memorial Day barbecue, the conversation got around to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There were eight of us in the conversation, two Jews and six Catholics – all non-religious, and all independent thinkers.
Not surprisingly, the range of opinions on the current conflict was wide. But the strongest supporters of Israel’s response to the Hamas attack came from two of the ex-Catholics.
The Jewish interlocutors were supportive of Israel’s right to exist, but critical of Netanyahu’s policies, and in particular of the encroachment of Israeli compounds in the West Bank.
One told an interesting story of a conversation she had with a small group of Jewish and Muslim women about this conflict. She said that when she articulated her views, the Muslim women were stunned. They said they had never encountered a Jewish person speaking critically of Israel.
Of my Jewish-American friends and colleagues, I can think of only one that supports Israel unequivocally. The rest have more complicated views.
Later that night, I came across this piece in Taki’s Magazine that gave some added detail and dimension to the conundrum of What to Do.
“The World Has Gone Bonkers!”
I was in Albany recently for a family wedding.
I’d never been to Albany before. It is a small city with a population of about 100,000. The city center is comprised mostly of stately 19th century buildings, a sprinkling of interesting mid-20th century buildings, and a handful of ugly edifices built in the 1970s and 1980s.
Judging strictly by its architecture, Albany is a charming, city – on par with Baltimore or Philadelphia. It’s more important than Baltimore or Philadelphia, though, since it’s the capital of New York, the second-largest state in the country.
Albany also has been one of the five most-locked-down states since the outbreak of the Coronavirus Hysteria.
Strolling through the center of the city, you can’t help but notice that the place is basically vacant. It has the ambiance of a post-Apocalyptic ghost town.
The Capitol Building, a magnificent structure of various architectural styles, is closed to the public. Wire fencing prohibits you from even getting near it. You wonder why, since there have been no attacks on this building. In fact, the closest thing to political action I saw while there was a man in a uniform standing in front of the fencing, surrounded by American flags, talking quietly about his service in Iraq to what looked to be a homeless person.
The streets are empty. Almost every office building is closed and shuttered. The two coffee shops within walking distance of our hotel are each staffed by a single person, serving only take-out. You can buy a toasted bagel and a coffee, but you can’t use their bathrooms. (“We regret that, due to the pandemic, our bathrooms are not available to our customers.”)
At least 90% of the local shops and stores are also closed, because their business has disappeared. Their business is gone because the Albany legislature is not in session. Legislators aren’t in their offices. Neither are the legions of lawyers and lobbyists and assistants that support them.
I was talking to my brother-in-law as we walked from our hotel to meet the rest of the family a few blocks away.
“This is weird.” he said.
I agreed. “It’s a city where most people are employed but few are working,” I said.
“And the rest are unemployed but receiving government support,” he said, laughing.
“It’s like the city is on an extended federally funded holiday,” I said. “And nobody is complaining, because the checks are coming in.”
We talked about other craziness going on:
* All across America, small businesses are having trouble finding employees. Yet unemployment is up. (The US currently has 7.4 million job openings and 9.8 million unemployed. The most obvious explanation: the multitrillion-dollar “COVID” bailout started by Trump and tripled by Biden.)
* Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency produced as a joke, became worth billions when Elon Musk recommended it. Then it plunged nearly 30% after Musk called it a “hustle” during his guest appearance on Saturday Night Live.
* Meanwhile, the AMA announced that they are eschewing their longstanding position of individual achievement and meritocracy in favor of a new mission that is based on critical race theory.
The wedding took place in a vineyard about 20 minutes out of town. It was generally wonderful, despite a few disturbing conversations.
One young woman told me she wants to empower women by encouraging them to start making money, like she did. And how did she make her money? She made some by working for a high-tech development business, but most by investing in cryptocurrencies. So what, exactly, is she going to be encouraging them to do?
Another guest told me that the business he’s been running at a total loss of $3 million over the last seven years has a marketable value of “at least $140 million.” I wondered how he came to that conclusion. “It’s not the business,” he explained. “It’s the brand.”
When I relayed these conversations to my brother-in-law, he shrugged. “The world has gone bonkers,” he said. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”