Joel Mathis

2025-05-16T07:40:00.002-05:00

I went to Starbucks this morning. Ordered my drink. Then waited 10 minutes to get it while the staff - just doing their jobs - filled a dozen "mobile" orders before they made the drink of the guy who was actually there in their shop.

2025-04-16T08:51:00.004-05:00

Bonnie Kristian: "I know what to do with a president who issues a bland, obligatory observance of Easter in the standard American political vocabulary of God while he’s busily bombing people and running roughshod over basic rights. (Usually: Ignore him.) I don’t quite know what to do with a president who fulsomely praises our Lord and Father, and with the same tongue curses human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. My brothers and sisters, this should not be."

https://open.substack.com/pub/bonniekristian/p/maybe-this-is-what-it-felt-like-when?r=1eqvn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

2025-04-16T08:51:00.000-05:00

Jamelle Bouie: "Any American who looks at the president’s actions and nods his head in approval is sacrificing his freedom whether he realizes it or not. To allow Trump the authority to seize and disappear immigrants at will is to close the curtain on democracy for citizens, too. You cannot have despotism for some and freedom for others."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/opinion/trump-court-order-constitution.html

2025-04-16T08:50:00.003-05:00

Peter C. Baker: "Not long ago, the United States government would, by default, seek to distance itself from images like this; often, as with images of post-9/11 torture, the government actively suppressed or destroyed them. The Trump administration releases them on purpose, implicitly arguing that their content is a source of pride and amusement. (If the Abu Ghraib photos leaked today, it’s possible to imagine that the White House would repost them approvingly.)"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/magazine/studio-ghibli-ai-images-deportation.html

2025-03-30T09:21:00.006-05:00

Nothing good comes ever from this kind of talk. MAGA is going to end the American age, and it's possible that will turn out for the best, but it won't feel good for citizens of the formerly dominant empire.

Movie #64 of 2025

2025-03-29T21:37:00.002-05:00

"Perfect Days."

2025-03-29T14:37:00.001-05:00

One of my pastimes is doing dishes while watching the CHEERS/FRASIER channel on Pluto. Every episode of Cheers has at least one moment that gives me a good belly laugh. Frasier often does as well, but the latter seasons the energy flagged a bit and you can tell.

2025-03-29T13:03:00.003-05:00

Texting with a longtime friend, one of my favorite persons in the world, who is of foreign origin but became a citizen decades ago. Still, they worry because even though they're a citizen the Trump administration's aggressiveness and willingness to move the goal posts means they can't feel entirely safe.

And I cannot tell this friend that they're worrying about nothing. I think they're right to worry. Damn it.

UPDATE: The friend is not nonbinary. I'm just hesitant to put even the least bit of identifying info out about them, even on this barely-read microblog, because I don't trust in their safety.

2025-03-29T11:32:00.009-05:00

Movie #63 of 2025: "The 400 Blows"

About the time Antoine stretched out on the couch and took a drag on his cigarette while reading Balzac, I realized I have never in my life been as cool as this fucking French tween.

Seen on a not-badly-English-dubbed film print at Liberty Hall in Lawrence KS.

2025-03-29T11:29:00.003-05:00

Currently reading Alexander Navalny's memoir, "Patriot," and it's reaffirming something that I've long suspected: Pop culture is a gateway drug to freedom. More on this later. But so far, it's an unexpectedly charming recounting. It's always a pleasure to find that something you pick up feeling like it's assigned homework is actually absorbing.

2025-03-29T11:26:00.001-05:00

The Washington Post has a new cable-news-style scroll across the bottom of its homepage and it might be the thing that forces me to finally cancel my subscription.

2025-03-28T16:19:00.002-05:00

I wonder what the pretext for the military takeover of Greenland will be.

2025-03-28T10:03:00.002-05:00

A coffee shop friend complimented my mustache, which led naturally to a discussion of childhood trauma.

2025-03-28T09:27:00.002-05:00

After finishing "The Great Gatsby" last night and enjoying it so, I think I'm going to go back and check out - again - a few books I only skimmed in my high school lit classes. "Crime and Punishment," you're up next.

2025-03-27T18:53:00.002-05:00

It’s like a dare. They're going to destroy much of what’s good about the country and see if anybody can stop them.

Book No. 8 of 2025

2025-03-27T18:07:00.002-05:00

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (3/27/25) I had not read this book since high school, more than 30 years ago, and recently realized that I really remembered nothing about it beyond Robert Redford's gleaming, slicked-back hair and the Jazz Age vibe. For various reasons, I decided to explore again. I'm not sure what I could have taken from this book when I was 16 -- at that point in my life, concepts like "regret" and "love affairs" were as real to me as dragons and starships. But it was a pleasure to read the week before I turn 52, and also more meaningful. And it still has the Jazz Age vibe.

2025-03-24T10:54:00.008-05:00

January:

The National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Show finished up in New Orleans last week, and an Automotive News poll of those gathered found dealers “overwhelmingly optimistic about President Donald Trump’s leadership, believing his administration will relieve electric-vehicle sales pressure and promote business, despite tariff risks.”

March:

In Maine, Adam Lee is the chairman of Lee Auto Malls, one of the state’s largest auto dealership groups. Lee Auto Malls sells brands including Toyota, and last month it had its worst February in terms of net profit since 2009. As Mr. Trump has unveiled his tariff agenda over the past two months, “faith in the economy has seemed to be the lowest it has been in a long time,” Mr. Lee said. “People don’t buy cars when the world is in chaos,” he added.

2025-03-24T09:17:00.002-05:00

Love is in Gruyère.

2025-03-24T09:15:00.001-05:00

Quite a headline:

Book # 7 of 2025

2025-03-23T17:25:00.001-05:00

The Memory Chalet, Tony Judt (3/23/25): A "public intellectual" and man of the left, Judt dictated this slim book -- a series of short essays, some about memory, some about ideas -- in the final months of his life before he died in 2010, physically unable to write on his own. It has moments of beauty, nostalgia, prescience and plain old persnicketyness. America was already in an age of decline by this moment, something Judt declares plainly and unsentimentally, and there are hints that something darker is coming. Memories may soon be all we have left.

2025-03-23T12:29:00.005-05:00

I do a lot of my writing at a local coffee shop, and I have seen any number of obvious first dates between people meeting in real life for the first time. What always astonishes me, regarding heterosexual couples: Women often gussy themselves up a bit.

Men mostly don't.

2025-03-23T07:58:00.002-05:00

J. Michael Luttig is, I think, unduly optimistic in this piece with the headline: "It’s Trump vs. the Courts, and It Won’t End Well for Trump." My first thought: Oh really?

He writes: "Mr. Trump seems supremely confident, though deludedly so, that he can win this war against the federal judiciary, just as he was deludedly confident that he could win the war he instigated against America’s democracy after the 2020 election." But, uh, didn't he ultimately win that war?

Again Luttig: "If Mr. Trump continues to attempt to usurp the authority of the courts, the battle will be joined, and it will be up to the Supreme Court, Congress and the American people to step forward and say: Enough."

Congress has already abandoned the field! I'm not sure the other two can entirely be counted on. I want what Luttig writes here to be true. And my own outlook is rarely positive. But goodness this seems too optimistic.

2025-03-22T14:43:00.001-05:00

To anyone at an A.I. conference looking for an A.I. lover, I might say, “You won’t be falling in love with an A.I. Instead, it’ll be the same humans you are disillusioned with—people who work at companies that sell A.I. You’ll be hiring tech-bro gigolos.”

2025-03-22T14:17:00.007-05:00

"I’m finding that the Second Trump Era is truly bad for my social media consumption. I mainly hang out — addictively — on Bluesky, where the (understandable) rage and panic comes at you in a firehouse. Maybe that’s the right response. But I don’t think I’ll survive it..." Read the whole thing

2025-03-22T13:57:00.003-05:00

A striking line from Jarod Lanier: "In the tech industry, we often speak of A.I. as if it were a person and of people as if they might become obsolete when A.I. and robots surpass them, which, we say, might occur remarkably soon."

We humans have treated much of the world as if it is disposable, important mainly in its usefulness to us. I wonder if AI will see us the same way?