Daily Log

Did manage to go back to sleep when I first got up today, and slept nearly to noon. Machine registered eight hours, and the rest of the stats were good. Fairly content doing little to nothing yesterday. Added a few lists to the EOY aggregate. Watched Laura's film group movie, L.A. Confidential, which was pretty much as great as I remembered it (although the sex and drugs blackmail sits even worse on me than it probably did when I first saw it). Then I watched the Oklahoma City-San Antonio semifinals game — the first NBA game I've seen this season, with only the finals between San Antonio and New York remaining. I can't say as I was very impressed by either team, probably because I've only heard of the stars, and I've seen very little of them. We then watched S4E9 of The Morning Show, so one more episode to sort out their mess (and set up a fifth season).

Doubt I'll do much today. More lists are possible, but I'm running out of energy there. Loose Tabs? Books? Some other Substack post? I started by moving Loose Tabs into a temporary work file (thus emptying the old scratch file). In theory, the extra file lets me start accumulating items for a future Loose Tabs while wrapping up this one. I doubt I will do that, but

Email (14 messages):

• Project Syndicate: What Price Hormuz? (Simon Johnson/Amir Kermani); The Mismeasurement of Europe's Productivity (three authors "rebut Paul Krugman's recent claim that the gap with the US is a statistical mirage"); Is China's Confidence Justified? (Jayati Ghosh); The Pope Should Have Gone Further on AI (Daron Acemoglu); The Tech-MAGA Breakup Is Coming (Stephen Holmes); Whose Vote Will Count in America's Midterms? (Reed Galen "says that the country's redistricting wars reflect both parties' lack of a credible vision for voters"); Americans Can't Afford Trump's Economy (Jeffrey Frankel); more pieces on AI, also on China.
• Gene Seymour: Miles Lives! (article from 1997, updated).
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• Brad Luen: Madrid's Golden Triangle of Art: A Consumer Guide.
• Substack: new free subscriber (Peter Feldstein, familiar name, but I didn't know this background: "Translator specializing in food and agriculture, with 40 years of experience studying the question of food systems and their environmental effects").
• TomDispatch: Rebecca Gordon, Endings and Beginnings.

Daily Log

Woke up at 7 something, and never really got back to sleep, so came down around 9:15. Logged 336 minutes, so 95 on the machine, which should suffice for today. I posted "But Reality Is Unscripted" to Substack, added reference to the Music Week draft, and finally posted Music Week. I think the cutoff was Thursday morning, but I've been piling up new reviews pretty quickly, hitting 20 by the time I posted Friday evening. Not sure what to do today. Main thing I keep thinking about is writing up "Representative Democracy" for Substack.

Email (8 messages):

• My Substack post: But Reality Is Unscripted. Got 8 likes; also 4 new subscribers (including Chris Monsen, Bret Julyk); I subscribed to Monsen. Stats show 1 restack, 127 views (108 email).
• Robert Wright: AI's Papal Audience
• RiotRiot: Takes by the Ocean: Nice Ratboys Finish Last, Especially Jack Harlow: Links to me re Neurosis.
• Tom Carson: Thoroughly Sod 'Em Milli.

Daily Log

I went to bed last night with Music Week still gestating, the introduction swelled to 802 words, and still nothing yet on Sonny Rollins. I'll pop the rest of that out today (if I don't get too distracted). We watched the first of a two-part Silent Witness last night, where Jack's darkly guarded brute strength erupts and he appears to have killed someone (who clearly, by American standards, had it coming, but this is British TV, so still acts like it has a conscience — and being not just fiction but TV, we can rest comfortably knowing that Jack will be exonerated, and that his passage through the hell of prison will unearth evidence that will be used to punish the even worse malefactors behind the scenes).

I woke up today with the thought that Trump has single-handedly soaked up all of the vices, the weak thinking, callous indifference, and clumsy acting out of America in the 80 years since the end of WWII. (As if he's in the penultimate season of Breaking Bad. But as this isn't fiction, let alone TV, reality is unscripted, and there is no chance he'll get a final season to make his peace with the world that took his too-readily volunteered soul.)

Of course, those vices went back much earlier, but had been temporarily masked or at least sanitized by the collective consciousness and culture of the Roosevelt years: the struggles against the great depression of capitalism, colonialism, and fascism. The triumph of WWII blessed America with unprecedented wealth and power (and ego), which (as always) made us corrupt and venal. You don't have to wait for Trump to find examples. Back when I was a child in the 1950s we were already hearing about "the ugly American." Even earlier saw the advent of "the quiet American" (as Graham Greene dubbed his CIA operative), sowing the seeds of future fiascos and wars — like the 1953 coup in Tehran that should now be seen as Act One of Trump's war against Iran.

Still, Trump is unique in American history. His great innovation is utter shamelessness, combined with a knack for acting so impulsively that he defies rational analysis. Where Clinton, Bush, and Obama struggled mightily (and desperately) to dress up America as a benevolent force in the world, Trump delights in its malignancy. And that's precisely what his followers love about him: he says and does and gets away with things they can only dream of. Most of this I can hardly comprehend, much less relate to. I only know that every fiber of his being is rotten to the core. That doesn't mean that everything he says or does is wrong. It just means that there is no way to salvage the whole.

It seems one is expected to either love or hate him. I don't hate him like I once hated Nixon, but at least I had a sense of Nixon as a human. I don't get that with Trump. He has no depth, no nuance, no sense of tragedy. He's commanded our attention, an inescapable nuisance like a humongous and indestructible horsefly or mosquito. But he's another species, impossible to relate to. For instance, I don't find anything remotely appealing about "reality TV" or "UFC cage matches." I don't lust after having a series of trophy wives, let alone cheating on them with porn stars. I don't doubt that some guys get off on that, but I don't get them either. Nor do I get the aesthetics: the gaudy displays, tacking his name on things like a dog marking territory. It's not even kitsch.

But Trump does one thing that even I appreciate: he punctures the pomposity of Obama and the Clintons and many more (there are many better reasons for despising John McCain, but Trump alone had the temerity to attack the POW martyrdom he built his career on, and the phony integrity he cloaked himself in). Of course, this only works if there is some truth to it. Razzing Democrats for palling around with rich folk works, even if part of the evidence is the Clintons attending Trump's 3rd wedding. We have lots of reasons to resent them as elites, and to dismiss their occasional shows of caring as hollow. And it really is no defense to point out that Trump's done (and will continue to do) far worse.

If Trump could apply his wit to himself and his followers, he'd be the second coming of Lenny Bruce. Of course, he can't: his ego is way too fragile to look at in the mirror, so weak he needs adoration to keep his tiny mind from collapsing into its own vacuum. He really needs his base to think they're great patriots and true Christians, because without their devotion, he's nothing. But he's bound to disappoint even them. He's promised redemption, but only delivered petty acts of revenge. He promised to "drain the swamp," but all he's done has been to turn it into his own private golf resort. He promised peace, and blundered into wars. He promised to "fix it," and he's broken everything he's touched. He brags about hiring only "the best people" and, well, look around.

How long it takes them to dump his sorry ass is still an open question — one I can't begin to answer, because the only clue that I have is the suspicion that Democrats can't see beyond nostalgia for their skewered former leaders. I'll give you one example: I saw a meme pointing out that Obama had produced a more viable deal preventing Iran from any sort of development of a nuclear weapon ("without killing anyone"), but Trump tore up that deal, and wound up launching an unnecessary and purely malicious war that (best case) will achieve far less than had alrealdy been agreed on. That true, as far as it goes, but it misses several key points:

1. Obama took Netanyahu at his word that Iran's nuclear program was directed at Israel, which was false.

2. Obama was right in understanding that Netanyahu's goals could only be achieved by an agreement with Iran, and not by threats that would only drive Iran to intensify its efforts.

3. But Netanyahu rejected that deal, because he wasn't really worried about Iran's "nuclear program," but wanted to keep Iran as an enemy, mostly to secure US funding for Israel's military. Netanyahu went on to mobilize American political support against Obama's deal, getting Democrats like Schumer and many Republicans to vote against it, and making opposition part of Trump's 2016 campaign.

4. Obama didn't put any pressure on Israel to moderate its stance against Iran, or to defuse issues with Palestinians or with Lebanon. Only the US made concessions, and very minor ones at that. (Some frozen funds were released.)

5. Obama refused to extend the negotiations to cover other issues of contention, including Iran's support for Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Obama kept most sanctions in place, and added more after the deal. He made no effort to normalize relations with Iran, although Iran had signaled a willingness to do so as far back as the 1990s, when Israel cranked up its anti-Iran phobia.

So sure, it's fair to blame Trump for starting this war, and it's pretty obvious no other American president (even Biden, who was silly putty in Netanyahu's hands) would have done so. But a long string of American presidents, going back to Jimmy Carter (or maybe even to Eisenhower) set up the conditions that allowed Trump to act so foolishly. But Obama looms large in that list, because he made the wrong deal, which left all of the phobias and arrogance unchecked. And he can't even claim deference to Israel has his reason for screwing up the deal, because he did the deal without Israel's blessing. His wound was self-inflicted.

Of course, what he really needed to do was to press Israel into some sort of settlement with the Palestinians that would allow a general normalization of relations across the whole Middle East. He made a couple gestures in that direction, but Netanyahu fought back, and he quickly threw in the towel. His predecessors going back to Truman had done no better, but no Israeli PM before Netanyahu had taken so much delight in bullying US presidents. (Indeed, Trump's problem is that he's even easier to kick around than Biden, Obama, Bush, or Clinton was.)

At some point in the above, it occurred to me to post what I was writing on Substack. Then it doubled in size. Time to move it over, and see what it looks like. One consequence is that I still (6:30PM) haven't written anything on Music Week (although I have added some lists to the 2025 EOY Aggregate).

Meanwhile, email (58 messages):

• Mike Konczal: I Gave (Fake?) House Testimony on Debt, Waste, and Overregulation.
• Xgau Sez: May, 2026: Ducking questions, mostly.
• Tom Carson: Lady Gabba Gabba Hey: Why the New York Times no longer maketh me lie down in gray pastures.
• Chuck Eddy: Things That Make You Go Hmmm . . .
• Brad Luen: Favorite tourist sites in Andalusia

Daily Log

Music Week organized last night, but no introduction written, so not posted. We'll do that today. Janice & Tim came over, and I heated up leftovers. We still have a bit left of everything but the corn and the chocolate cake, but the containers are much reduced.

Came down at 11 AM. Didn't read, as I had finished Breakneck last night. Not sure what is next, as I have several possibilities.

Email (32 messages):

• TomDispatch: William D Hartung, Raging Against the Machine
• Project Syndicate: The Pope Should Have Gone Further on AI (Daron Acemoglu); Keynes, Minsky, and the Economics of Uncertainty (William H Janeway); Is China's Confidence Justified? (Jayati Ghosh); The Affordability Crisis Is About More than Prices (Carolina Alves); Why Are China's Young People Fed Up? (Yi Fuxian).
• Substack: Music Week in Advance: +2 likes; +1 subscriber.
• Tom Carson: Chicken Little'e Revenge ("It's always worse when Chicken Little thinks he's the bearer of good news. Every time." Also: "To everything there is a season. Yes, even this shit.") Trump's an easy target, so why does so much of this miss its target?

Tom Carson published his screed on the Colbert finale on Facebook. I commented:

I watched it to the end, and thought it was pretty great. Admittedly, I occasionally glanced at the timer and wondered how they were going to extend this or that bit to run out the clock, but the blackout and the closing music were just about perfect. We've watched both Colbert and Kimmel on DVR regularly, but usually just for the monologues. My wife is more keenly sensitive to the politics. For me the big thing was less what the hosts said than just to see the audience so solidly supportive. Made me feel like we're not alone. I stopped watching after the second Trump election, lamenting the futility, but eventually came back, again for the audience solidarity.

Music Week

Expanded blog post, June archive (in progress).

Tweet: Music Week: 40 albums, 7 A-list

Music: Current count 46001 [45961] rated (+40), 32 [12] unrated (+20).

New records reviewed this week:

• Carsie Blanton & the Burning Hell: Everything Is Great! (2026, self-released): [sp]: A
• Carsie Blanton: The Red Album Vol. 2 (2026, self-released, EP): [sp]: A-
• Sarah Elizabeth Charles: Dawn (2024-25 [2025], Stretch/Ropeadope): [sp]: B+(**)
• Delivery: Force Majeure (2025, Heavenly): [sp]: B+(**)
• E-Dancer: E-Dancer (2025, One House): [sp]: B+(***)
• Wendy Eisenberg: Wendy Eisenberg (2026, Joyful Noise): [sp]: B
• Ella Eyre: Everything, in Time (2025, Play It Again Sam): [sp]: B+(**)
• Kim Jung Jae: Shamanism (2025, Relative Pitch): [sp]: B+(**)
• The Klezmatics: We Were Made for These Times (2025 [2026], Asphalt Tango): [sp]: B+(**)
• Chris Lake: Chemistry (2025, Black Book): [sp]: B+(***)
• Timo Lassy Trio: Live in Helsinki (2023 [2025], We Jazz): [bc]: B+(***)
• The Gareth Lockrane Big Band: Box of Tricks (2025, Whirlwind): [sp]: B+(*)
• Los Cenzontles/Taj Mahal/David Hidalgo/Gary Haleamau/Sonny Kim: Adios Ke Aloha: Waves of the Same Sea (2026, Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center): [sp]: B+(*)
• Taj Mahal & the Phantom Blues Band: Time (2026, Resonatin'/Thirty Tigers): [sp]: A-
• MC Yallah & Debmaster: Gaudencia (2025, Hakuna Kulala): [sp]: B+(*)
• Nicole McCabe: Color Theory (2026, Birdwatcher): [sp]: B+(***)
• Nandipha808: Who Made Who (2026, Stena Academy): [sp]: A-
• Camila Nebbia/James Banner/Max Andrzejewski: Presencia (2024 [2025], Ears & Eyes): [bc]: B+(***)
• Neurosis: An Undying Love for a Burning World (2026, Neurot): [sp]: B
• The New Gypsies: The New Gypsies Featuring Vic Juris (2017 [2026], SteepleChase): [sp]: B+(*)
• Genesis Owusu: Redstar Wu & the Worldwide Scourge (Ourness) **
• Jeremy Pelt: Our Community Will Not Be Erased (2025 [2026], HighNote): [sp]: B+(**)
• John Pizzarelli: Dear Mr. Bennett (2026, Green Hill Music): [sp]: B+(***)
• The Rumjacks: Dead Anthems (2025, Four Four Music): [sp]: B+(*)
• Dabin Ryu: Trio! (2025, Endectomorph Music): [sp]: B+(**)
• SFJazz Collective: Collective Imagery (2025, SFJazz): [sp]: B+(***)
• Dayna Stephens: Monk'D (2022 [2025], Contagious Music): [sp]: B+(***)
• Earl Sweatshirt/MIKE/Surf Gang: Pompeii//Utility (2026, 10k): [sp]: B+(**)
• Talk Show: Miss America (2023 [2025], We Jazz): [bc]: B+(**)
• Isaiah J. Thompson: The Book of Isaiah: Modern Jazz Ministry (2024 [2025], Mack Avenue): [sp]: B+(**)
• Sammy Virji: Same Day Cleaning (2025, Capitol): [sp]: B+(**)
• Marta Warelis/Ada Rave: Peel/Mondo (2024 [2025], Relative Pitch): [bc]: B+(*)
• Marta Warelis: Still Life With Lemons (2024 [2026], Relative Pitch): [bc]: B+(**)
• Ben Williams: Between Church & State (2025, Safe Space): [sp]: B+(**)
• Anthony Wilson Nonet: House of the Singing Blossoms (2025, Sam First): [sp]: B+(**)
• Winona Fighter: My Apologies to the Chief (2025, Rise): [sp]: B+(***)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Daunik Lazro/Joëlle Léandre/Paul Lovens: For Baritone Sax, Double Bass & Drumset (2013 [2026], Relative Pitch): [sp]: B+(**)
• Vardis: 100 M.P.H. '79 Revisited (1978-80 [2026], High Roller): [sp]: B+(***)

Old music:

• Gary Burton: New Vibe Man in Town (1962, RCA): [sp]: B+(**)
• Gary Burton/Sonny Rollins/Clark Terry: 3 in Jazz (1963, RCA): [sp]: B
• Evan Parker/Derek Bailey/Han Bennink: The Topography of the Lungs (1970 [2023], Otoroku): [bc]: A-
• Sonny Rollins: Sonny Boy (1956 [1961], Prestige): [sp]: A-
• Sonny Rollins: Brass/Trio (1958 [1962], Verve): [sp]: B+(***)

Grade (or other) changes:

• Black Nile: Indigo Garden (2026, Hen House Studios): [sp]: [was: B+(**)]: B+(***)
• Taj Mahal & Keb' Mo': Room on the Porch (2025, Concord Jazz): [sp]: [was: B+(***)] A-
• Sonny Rollins: Nucleus (1975, Milestone): [sp]: [was: B-]: B+(*)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Bobby Bradford/Mark Dresser/Hafez Modirzadeh: Sonic House Reunion (NoBusiness) [05-01]
• Marion Brown: Live in Europe 1968 & 1972 (NoBusiness) [05-01]
• Anthony Caceres: Let's Take a Trip (Jig in G) [02-27]
• Daniel Carter/Sabir Mateen/William Parker/Lou Grassi: Keeping It in Context (1996, NoBusiness) [05-01]
• Columbia Icefield: A Silence Opens (Out of Your Head) [05-29]
• Michael Dease Big Band: Return Trajectory (Origin) [06-19]
• George: Looking for Consonance (Out of Your Head) [05-08]
• Brad Goode Quintet: Live Your Dream (Origin) [06-19]
• Rafael Greco: Versos Bajo Mi Sombra/Verses Under My Shadow (Blue Canoe) [04-17]
• Andy Haas: Messianic Time (Resonant Music) [05-14]
• Jon Hamar: Música Callada (Origin Classical) [06-19]
• Carolyn Lee Jones: Eklektika: Jazz Retro Pop Bossa Nova (Catn'round Sound) [06-08]
• Sunny Murray/Sabu Toyozumi: Sun's Blessings (1999, NoBusiness) [05-01]
• Miles Okazaki: Boomtown (Pi) [06-26]
• Ben Patterson: Stretch (Origin) [06-19]
• Kemuel Roig: Both Sides Now (Life in Music) [05-15]
• Jeff Rupert Quartet: Sea Spell (Rupe Media) [06-29]
• Scott Sadlon: Songs From Thin Air (Buddha Boy) [01-28]
• Schapiro 17: Best Laid Plans (Summit) [05-08]
• Tyshawn Sorey: Members . . . Don't (Pi) [05-29]

Daily Log

Dinner was pretty successful. My timing was just about perfect, but two scares at the end: when I pulled the bison out of the oven, it was dry and appeared to be totally burnt; meanwhile, the sweet potatoes were distinctly undercooked. The bison just needed a good stir, although after I had scraped out the meat, the dutch oven appeared to be hopelessly crusted. It's still soaking as I write this. The sweet potatoes needed more work. I cranked the oven up to 425F (recipe had called for 400F for 30 minutes; I usually do 425F for sweet potatoes or pretty much any root vegetables, and often longer), poured some water into the pan, and loosely covered it with aluminum foil. It worked, and when I checked 10 minutes later, they were perfect.

Next step is to write this up for Facebook. Working on that, before I got distracted. [PS: Link here.]

Email (38 messages):

I'm finally finding myself thinking a bit about Sonny Rollins, who died yesterday (95). Trying to figure out what else I can listen to. (I started with Sonny Boy (1956), then Brass/Trio (1958). I'm adding things to the still unpublished Music Week. Occurs to me that maybe I should pull together all of my previous Rollins reviews, so I brought up my "book." Found this quote there: "If you tried to simplify jazz sax to a model as simple as a tree, the trunk would be [Coleman] Hawkins, with Sonny Rollins standing on his shoulders. Everyone else is just a branch."

Spent much of the day thinking about Rollins, playing things, but it eventually became clear that collecting the old writing was going to be a big job, requiring a lot of rework. So I moved on to Music Week. Ran the cutover, but noticed an anomaly, as the number of graded records dropped. Took me several hours to figure out why, and to fix the problem. (A chunk of jazz-40s got deleted accidentally, wiping out Dexter Gordon's artist entry, and transferring several of his albums to Paul Gonsalves. I need better tools for comparing files to backup copies on the server.) I finally ran the cutover around 11:30 PM. Too late to post anything tonight, so that will wait until tomorrow.

Janice and Tim came over for leftovers, so we cleared out most of what we had. Dutch oven cleaned up fairly well after an overnight soak.

Daily Log

Went to bed at my normal 3AM. Woke up a bit after 8. Tried going back to sleep, to little avail. Came down at 9:45. I have a lot of cooking to do today. Yesterday I debated rushing Music Week out, then it occurred to me that I could pick out a few reviews, and send them to my Substack list. At this point, I care more about my few known subscribers than the anonymous blog readers, whoever they may be. Why not give them a break? Especially as I only had one May post, and the monthly stats have been crushing all year. I spent an hour writing up a cursory introduction, then picked out eight reviews: one A, three A-, four lower grades including a B for the year's top metal album. I didn't break the sections up between new-new, new-old, and old-old, but the split was 6-1-1.

I introduced a system in the staging directory where my temporary drafts are named { T1, T2, . . . }, then the pieces are assigned sequence numbers only when I'm ready to publish. I came up with this for blog posts, as I'm slow working on a books post, but the old system (temp files called "next" and "books") was proving unwieldy and confusing. One thing this lets me do is to stage multiple books posts at the same time. I have a lot of backlog, which I need to flush, but a full year after the last books post, my first one should hit the priority books. I can then follow that up with one or more lower-priority posts. It took a small programming change for the blog files, but just links here.

Menu for today, with notes on what I need to do, in roughly what order. This is from memory, and may well change as I look at the cookbooks. But I have a fairly good idea what I'm doing (I think):

1. Braised Bison Colorado: First because it takes so long: 3.5 hours in a 375F oven, but first I need to make the Colorado sauce (boil chile peppers and onion, run it through the blender, strain it), and cube and brown the bison. It should be thawed by now. The sauce is going to be hotter than I would like. I may cut it down a bit, but I didn't really care for the other bison recipes (jerky, meatballs), and I'll have other dishes. After browning, I add the sauce and beef stock, then stick it in the oven, and that's all.
2. Grilled Corn: I have the small chunks of corn on the cob, thawed. I'm going to try to "grill" them in a cast iron skillet, with a little oil. I will eventually add a lime-cilantro sauce, so I may prep that ahead of time. In any case, I figure I'll warm up the grilled corn come serving time, with the sauce.
3. Charred Pineapple Salsa: I have a package of pineapple spears. I'll throw them into the cast iron skilled once the corn is done. Recipe also calls for charring 1-2 jalapenos, so I'll do that as well. I can assemble the salsa later.
4. Roasted Sweet Potatoes: Peel and cube, then mix with maple syrup and sage leaves, and pile into a baking dish. I can pop that into the oven to come out just before service. I think it's 400F for 30 minutes. I'm going to use the gas oven for the bison, leaving the electric free for this.
5. Steamed White Fish in Corn Husks: Husks have been soaking overnight. They're disposable anyway. I have two 1-lb packages of fish filets (one trout, one branzino), thawed out over night. I need to wrap each one up in a corn husk, with some garlic, a bay leaf, and some lime slices. Recipe calls for oil, but I'm inclined to use butter (same for the corn). Recipe includes a tomato salsa, but suggests the pineapple as a substitute. I probably won't bother with the tomato, but I do have some if I have the time. I'm a bit worried that it's not all going to fit in the steamer, so I may have to do two batches. The steaming itself is 15 minutes, and on its own burner, so that shouldn't be a big problem.
6. Tomatillo Salad: I cut all of the ingredients last night, so all I need to do here is to make the dressing, and toss it together. Mostly lime and cilantro.
7. Dandelion Greens Salad: Calls for pickled blueberries, which I did last night. No dadelions available, so I'll substitue arugula. Not sure what else goes into it. Another vinaigrette.
8. Mixed Greens with Prickly Pear: Similar to the DeSpain Watercress Salad recipe, and probably better for our purposes. I julienned jicama, green apple, and onion last night, and put it in a bag with some lemon juice. For greens I have arugula and mustard greens. I may emphasize the latter, as the arugula will mostly be in the other salad. Recipe also calls for pecans and queso fresco (or feta; I have cotijo). Big thing here is the prickly pear dressing. I don't have the juice called for, but I do have syrup, which is probably workable.
9. I have leftover cake and ice cream for dessert. The presentation is sloppy, but there is a lot of it.

10:30 now. I'll get to work after breakfast. Seems to me like this should be pretty manageable, but everything is taking longer than it used to, so I wouldn't be surprised to find myself up against the 6:00 deadline.

Email (30 messages):

• M6.7 earthquake in Chile.
• Sonny Rollins died, at 95: from Terri Hinte, also DownBeat; also Substack posts about Rollins from Michael Steinman, Gene Seymour.
• Replacement copy of The Return of Resentment shipped.
• Substack stats for "Music Week in Advance: 5 likes, 0 comments, 0 restacks, 0 new subscribers, 123 views (107 from email).
• Wichita Public Library: 2 books renewed, until June 12.
• TomDispatch: Robert Lipsyte, To Understand Where America Is Heading, Read Sports
• Tom Carson: Alt-History 109 (Prof. Kinbote)
• I uploaded a plate photo from today's meal.

Update 2:35: Bison Colorado in the 375F oven now. Needs 3.5 hours, so 5:45? Corn grilled, and I brushed a little lime-cilantro butter on it. I'll warm it up later, in more of the butter. Pineapple also grilled. I'll probably make the salsa next. Sweet potatoes are cut and dressed, ready to go into 400F oven for 30 minutes, so about 5:15. Salads are going to be a little ad hoc, but that's mostly making dressings and choosing greens. The serious cutting is mostly done. That leaves the fish as the remaining issue. The corn husks are soaked, and the steamer is set up. Big unknown is one or two batches, but worst case is 35 minutes cooking time. [PS: Yes, two batches.]

Daily Log

I felt kind of queasy last night. I went up shortly after TV, read a bit, then went sleep, not much after 1 AM. I woke up twice during the night, reading some, then finally got up at 12:15 PM. Logged 546 minutes. I feel better as I'm writing this. Most likely explanation was hyperglycemia from the cakes I made for Rannfrid's birthday. I just had one thin slice of each, but did a lot of scraping and licking along the way. The cakes were about half eaten at the party. I left an extra quarter of each for Rannfrid and "the house," and brought the rest home. By that point, the slices weren't sturdy enough to stand on their own — I had overcompensated for my habit of overbaking so they came out soft, and for the cannoli cake a bit underdone. I took a 9x13 cake pan, filled it with crumbled slices and loose bits, covered it, and put it in the refrigerator.

I spent most of my overnight ordeal dreading making dinner on Tuesday. As I'm feeling better now, I might as well go ahead and do it, but I may dial back my expectations. I need to figure that out, then go shopping, this afternoon. Cutting out the grill will be a big help. Google suggests grilling corn in a cast iron pan. Once grilled, I figure I can make the sauce in a regular skillet, and reheat the corn in it. Maybe I'll try making the pineapple salsa with cut pineapple in the same cast iron pan. Main dish will be a chunk of bison roast I have in freezer. It just goes in a pot to braise (The Colorado sauce has a lot of chilis, so that will have to be moderated.) I might do the steamed fish in corn husks. I need to see what fish I have in the freezer. Beyond that, the salads I skipped in the original DeSpain dinner worked out nicely, and can easily be reprised. Arugula worked reasonably well in place of dadelions. I think I can leave the corn out of the tomatillo salad. I did both squash and sweet potatoes last time, which were near cousins. I'll just do the sweet potatoes this time, as they came out better. I don't think the fry bread is worth the trouble. Aside from DeSpain, I have a second native American cookbook I can consult. It covers the continent more broadly, but there is considerable overlap. I probably don't need to pick up any more recipes, but I'll take another loook at it.

I may or may not do Music Week today. This is the last Monday in May, so doing so would add some extra overhead, in that I'd also need to set up the June Streamnotes file, and in theory do the index accounting for May (but that's hypothetical, given that the last one I've done was December, 2025). I have +35 albums this week, +2 unrated, and two packages I haven't opened yet. Running the cutoff is easy enough, and I don't really have to write any introduction. Not sure yet what to do.

Email (20 messages):

• Project Syndicate: Slug line is from the Yanis Varoufakis post: NATO Must Die. Other items of possible interest: A Cold Shower for the AI Mania (Raghuram G Rajan); Keynes, Minsky, and the Economics of Uncertainty (William H Janeway); The Myth of the Deserving Billionaire (Teresa Ghilarducci); The Affordability Crisis Is About More Than Prices (Carolina Alves); The Root of Today's Global Imbalances (Lee Jong-Wha); Trumponomics Is Failing on Growth (Simon Johnson); Why Are China's Young People Fed Up? (Yi Fuxian); Iran Is Pressing Its Strategic Advantage (Carla Norrlöf); Why Trump Sued Himself (Stephen Holmes: sees the "settlement" "not as corruption but as a public performance of impunity"); The Gulf's Post-OPEC Order (Rabah Arezki/Tarik M Yousef); The Coming Vote for Europe's Soul (Kevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke, on "an odious trade agreeement with the Trump administration").
• TomDispatch: Jasper Craven, A Hell of a Secretary of War
• Tom Carson: Pipe Smoke and Mirrors: The resistible rise and rot of Trump Sovieticus. A fairly desperate attempt to recast Trump-Hitler as Trump-Stalin, using Bertrand Russell as a fulcrum, but like Stalin himself, never quite figures out how to incorporate all that Marxian revolutionary spirit into the Russian bureaucracy and militarism. Still, those historical analogies weigh heavily on Trump, whose most conspicuous features is his ineptitude.
• Allen Lowe: Hello I Must Be Going: Some kind of sign off, although he's promising to continue posting a few pieces (including "opinion pieces") and other "reparations" for the paid subscriptions.

Daily Log

Slept until 11:45. Started writing about the cakes at the end of yesterday's entry. Birthday party starts at 5, so we should leave here around 4:30 to deliver them just before everything kicks off. That leaves me less than four hours to assemble and finish them. Should be sufficient, but we've been running into a lot of Murphy lately. First thing I need to do is to take the frosting/filling out of the refrigerator. Cannoli filling isn't quite a firm as I would like. Next will be to make the rum/orange sauce. Then I need to unwrap the chocolate cakes, stack and frost them. Then I can make the ganache, let it cool a bit, and pour it over the cake. I have some mini Reeses Pieces I can use as a garnish. They also suggest piping the leftover peanut frosting around the top. Doubt I'll do that.

Before I finish the chocolate, I'll probably start on the cannoli cake. Critical step is to slice the two cakes horizontally, making four layers. I have a saw to do that, but it will depend on how well the cakes hold up, and handling the layers is going to be difficult. Each layer will be topped with filling (supposedly one cup each), and dotted with chocolate chips. I then need to spread the rest around the sides, and dot them with more chocolate chips. I'm thinking I'll need tweezers for that step, so that will be time-consuming. I'm worried about how room temp will affect the filling/frosting. So still a fair amount of uncertainty here.

Email (10 messages):

• Tom Carson: Colbert Grapes.

Daily Log

Went to bed early last night, before Laura even. I went shopping yesterday, getting supplies to make cakes today. Had to go to a second store, as the first was out of mascarpone. Rained hard while I was in the store. I did laundry last night. We watched episode eight of Ballard, then Laura wanted to "check out" Widow's Bay. We watched the first episode a while back, and I hated it. I agreed, but hated this second episode more actively, and walked out midway, going down to fetch the laundry. By the time I was done, I was too tired to do anything else, so I just went to bed. Read a bit in the China book (Breakneck).

Email (8 messages):

• Robert Wright: This Week's TACO. Trump was evidently prepared to sign a weak order on regulating AI (allowing security agencies to sniff around before product release), but was talked out of it by "Silicon Valley accelerationists" (including Bezos and Musk).
• Mike Konczal: Discussing The Wage Standard with Arin Dube: author of a book of that title. Regarding post-pandemic inflation, Konczal says the vidence "fits a supply-shock story, where workers are trying to catch up to all the stuff that's happened and they follow this mimic pattern as the supply shock comes off." Ergo, rising wages in a tight labor market wasn't to blame.
• Tom Carson: Lurch, Morticia, and John Fetterman.
• Tom Carson: Frankenride 6.
• Laura sent me a link (better link) to a Doug Henwood podcast (audio only). Refers to recent pieces lamenting American decline (failures viz. Iran and China) by Robert Kagan and Max Boot. Interviews Laleh Khalili and Mouin Rabbani. Khalili says "America is the most malignant empire in human history," while Israel "is completely rabid."

I need to bake my cakes today:

• Cannoli Cake (Marcellina in Cucina)
• Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

Daily Log

Woke up around 9, but went back to sleep, and woke up an hour and a half later from a weird dream. Came down around 11:30. Still cool outside.

Email (40 messages):

• Chuck Eddy: The Topical Song.

I've added some jazz ballots to my EOY aggregate. Given that all of the records that got votes in the Jazz Critics Poll were already listed, that's been relatively easy. Main effect is to shift the top jazz records up in the standings. That's probably not a good thing per se, but should make the results more consistent with past years. I've also added the EOY list of Jason Gross. He picks up a lot of records no one else gets. In past years I've found some remarkable albums there, but not so much recently. The first few I've sampled haven't broken out of the high B+ ranks. I also mean to add Christgau's Dean's List, which is often the last thing I add, so seems mandatory here (although his grades are already heavily weighted). I'm spreading out a little bit, but don't expect much. One such addition has been the Bandcamp Daily essential records lists.

I needed to reboot the computer to finish installing a software update. So now I need to get back to where I was before the reboot. One thing I had just started was to create stub files for An Overview of the Website and An Overview of the Writings. The former starts with an ls -lRt of the whole website. I can then sort through that list and decide what I want to document, and where. My short-term goal is to write a letter I can send to many of the people in my address book. I'd like to encourage them to get in touch, by offering a personal info update. Much of what I have to share involves writings on the website(s). Rather than clutter up the letter, I figure one link to the overview(s) should suffice, and offer somewhere I can do a better job of keeping up with.

Daily Log

Went to bed early, and slept better. Got up at 10:30, but it's 12:20 as I write this. I finally broke down and cleared my desk off. Found an old plastic cup to collect long things: pens, pencils, chopsticks, two screwdrivers, a steak knife. Loose paper got piled up to deal with later (some already trashed). Many more piles of crap lying around, some augmented with former desk stuff, but it's a start. I'm still missing two albums in the pending queue, and found one loose CD without its jacket, so mysteries abound.

Unclear what to do today, other than process May CG. I've been playing albums from it, an improvement over picking out missed items from the DownBeat ballot. Jigsaw puzzle work is so slow I'm not motivated to put much into it. I continue to have problems with Spotify. Web interface worked until I brought up the Earl Sweatshirt album, which it refused to play. Listening to it now via Bandcamp.

Email (33 messages):

• Christgau website correction: s/Jane Weidlin/Jane Wiedlin/, goes back to one review from 1986, also wrong in book.
• TomDispatch: A Global War on Children. "In the Trumpian Age, Every Accusation Is Also a Confession."
• Sen. Roger Marshall: Boeing, Beef, and Beans: President Trump Delivers Big Wins for Kansas.
• Medicare: Stay Healthy with Dr. Oz.

I added the Christgau CG to his website. When I went to update the server, I got a disk space error. When I looked at the server, I found two very large error_log files, so I truncated them. Before doing so, I noticed that most of the lines were complaints about a deprecated function in PHP (strftime). It was being used to generate a RSS feed, so I worked on that. The suggested fix was to use date() instead, but the encoding was different, so I asked Google AI to translate. It did, but not perfectly, so I wound up having to recheck it all by hand. I also got rid of a couple of database backups, and I cleaned out the mail inbox.

I looked later, and found more error_log complaints. In particular, I was getting an exception on a SQL query. It seemed to be working, and I couldn't find where the complaint was generated, so I asked Google AI what was wrong with my query. It said my query was ok for "basic MySQL," but a better query would specify "INNER JOIN" and it showed me how. While I understand the difference between inner and outer joins, I've never used the join operator, so it would have taken me hours to research this problem. The new code works fine. There's a good chance this should be done elsewhere.

I also found a complaint about stripslashes(). The suggested code fix strikes me as stupid, but it too seems to work. Evidently functions which operate on strings no longer assume that null is equal to "", so you have to cast null values to turn them into empty strings (the code to do this is far from intuitive: ?? ''). I'm finding similar problems with other string functions, like htmlentities(), as well as warnings about unset array indexes.

Daily Log

Slept ok. Came down at 11:25. Weight up one pound, so I'm not adjusting correctly. We are going out to dinner tonight, so that won't help. But Janice & Tim are leaving for Olympia next week. I figured I might make dinner, but Laura liked the idea of going out better. They agreed on Carrabba's, which Janice has never been to. (We've been dozens of times, but I think only once in the last year.) I am scheduled to cook for Mike & Gretchen next Tuesday. We'll reprise the DeSpain cookbook menu, which they missed the original of. I have a bison roast left in the freezer, also some corn to grill. I may do the Mexican chocolate cake again.

Spent considerable time figuring out what went wrong with Christgau's "Dean's List: 2025." I have notes, originally meant as research for writing a Substack piece on albums he missed. Not sure I can (or should) use much of what I figured out. Basically, he missed a lot of stuff, and doesn't care. That can happen when you have expectations to live up to. He has a new CG out today, so I'll process that before updating the website. I also spent some time adding jazz critic ballots to the 2025 EOY Aggregate. No real good reason. Just something I felt like doing, but it reminds me both of what I like and hate about that task. While I may only briefly mention "Dean's List: 2025" I should write a bit about my EOY Aggregate. The main point is to showcase reviews of good albums that escaped the notice of pretty much everyone else, so I need to explain the method behind the madness.

Other thing I did a bit of work on was a books post. I made very little progress. One problem is that I already have a ton of leftover entries, which are quickly being overwhelmed by new books, each of which take a fair chunk of time just to note and sum up. The upside is that I learn a hell of a lot each time I do this. But it's going to take a lot of time, and these days it's hard to tell what that's worth.

The Spotify app stopped working (specifically, search ceased to work). AI diagnostics were useless. I tried to complain, but I have little confidence in that. I was able to run the website interface, so I'm listening to Carsie Blanton now.

Email (25 messages):

• Robert Christgau: Consumer Guide: May, 2026. A+ for Blanton. Two Taj Mahal albums, one new and one I need to recheck. An African comp from 2008 I'm on record at A-. Two quasi-jazz albums I've heard and wasn't much impressed with. Aside from one Taj Mahal, nothing really looks like 2025 catch up. I need to process this today or tomorrow, adding it to the database as well as the website, then upload both.
• Vox has been bought up by Lupa Systems, owned by James Murdoch.
• I ordered two books and a nonslip bathtub mat from Amazon.

I linked to Blanton both on Bluesky and Facebook.

I've come up with a new strategy for handling the book roundup. I've created two blog archive files, t1 and t2. That way I can work on two book roundup posts simultaneously, without committing a blog sequence number to either. Those titles are designed to be recycled for future projects. The lack of a leading number will probably keep them from appearing in the blog roll (although I need to check that). I figure the first one will be my high priority books list. It's been a year since my last compilation, so I expect there are lots of primo books to mention. The second I want to use to clear out the leftover entries from last year, plus other lower-priority books.

It's possible I could come with several priority book posts. If that's the case, I'll publish t1, then start another under that same name. So t2 will always be the mop-up file, the last in this series of Book Roundups. (I think at one point in the past I knocked out four such posts in quick succession.)

Daily Log

Slept better, just under six hours, but AHI dropped down to 1.4, and average leak was 0.2. Security system was beeping when I got up, so I had to turn it off. We had another brief power outage overnight. Computer was ok, but some of the unprotected electronics need their clocks reset. We got quite a bit of rain when the storm finally blew through. It was done by 1AM, when I took the garbage cans out. Some leaf litter suggests we got some wind. I didn't notice any hail. Much cooler today, 44F[*] when I came down, about 10:30. Music Week is up, so I don't have to deal with that. Hanna is done. I'm feeling ripped off, but that's one more thing off the checklist. Trying to schedule a dinner for later this week. Other than that, I'm pretty free.

[*] Turns out the weather machine had been changed to measure dew point instead of actual temperature. When I corrected this, around 3:30PM, the 46F became 56F. So still cool, but not cold.

I started taking notes on Christgau's Dean's List. I have a Substack file open for that. I won't be sending the notes out, but they'll provide backup for whatever I do send. I have it sequenced after a Loose Tabs summary, which is barely started. So I can fiddle with both of those, and see what (if anything) comes out. I finished Acemoglu & Johnson, aside from the interesting-looking bibliographic essay, which not only references sources but reiterates key concepts. Good book. I've started Dan Wang: Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future. I've long waited for a book on China that isn't full of shit. The usual problem is that we tend to measure China on our own yardstick, which we don't understand very well. So the main thing is to see China on its own terms, without totally losing a critical eye. This introductory quote strikes me as fairly well balanced:

It is almost uncanny how much the United States and China have been complementary of each other. It was no accident tha the two countries established, for a few decades, an economic partnership that worked tremendously well for American consumers and Chinese workers. But on a political level, these two sytems are a study in contrasts. While the United States reflects the virtues of pluralism and protection of individuals, China revealed the advantages and perils that come from moving quickly to achieve rapid physical improvements.

Over the past four decades, China has grown richer, more technologically capable, and more diplomatically assertive abroad. China learned so well from the United States that it started to beat America at its own game: capitalism, industry, and harnessing its people's restless ambitions. If you want to appreciate what Detroit felt like at its peak, it's probablly better to experience that in Shenzhen than anywhere in the United States.

As China emulated America's past successes, the US government got busy undermining its own strengths. A procedure-obsessed left conspired with a thoughtlessly destructive right to constrain the government. Neither the left nor the right allows the state to deliver essential goods expected by the public. The Biden administration may have ushered through historic bills on industrial poicy, but executive agencies were so obsessed with procedural concerns that little building actually took place before voters reelected Donald Trump, who has threatened to cancel many of these projects. The United States is still a superpower that is able to outclass China on many dimensions. But it is also in the grips of an ineffectual state where people are increasingly concerned with safeguarding a comfortable way of life.

Of course, his left isn't the real left, but point taken. When Social Security and Medicare were passed, they went into effect almost immediately, so the benefits were quickly tangible. But it took 3-5 years to put Obamacare into effect, so its value wasn't readily apparent (and probably still isn't, partly due to sabotage, partly blunted ambition, and also because it mostly served to arrest or slow down adverse trends, like exclusion for pre-existing conditions. The "abundance agenda" crowd is one reaction to this. Many on the left are very suspicious of Klein/Thompson, and how their arguments have been taken up by centrists, but Mamdani was quick to embrace their logic, and put it to work, recognizing that the left needs to actually deliver, not just criticize.

Email (24 messages):

• 4DaRecord yum code: Souchal/Madeira/Parrinha: Parcours D'Impulsions, downloaded.
• TomDispatch: Is the US Heading Toward a Hard Landing? What Can North Korea Tell Us About America's Failure? Engelhardt is calling this "America's Flight 93 Moment."
• Scott Galloway had the audience. Here's what he came for.

Daily Log

Bad night sleeping. Score 85, despite clearing 344 minutes, the AHI number was an astronomical 9.1 (target is under 5.0; I usually get close to 2.0), with a 6.2 average leak (90% leak 25.2). I spent much of the night fighting leaks, tightening up the mask, a surprise after swapping in a new cushion just a couple days ago. Of course, Laura's night was far worse. Dog may have had a rough time, too, but is more stoical about it. Hanna coming over today. Just got a call (11:40AM) that they're heading over, so I'll have to deal with them before breakfast. Other than that, nothing much today. I finished adding the link numbers to the Dean's List, which let me do a pretty comprehensive error check. I caught a few problems with the database entries, and fixed more in the file.

Hanna (Chance) came over to tune up the air conditioner. Took a bit over an hour. Charged me $360 for the annual (two-visit) service contract. That's more than 50% up from last year. I was already thinking we're paying too much, and I should consider switching to someone else. Fortunately, we can afford to grin and bear it. But as someone who thinks capitalism is becoming increasingly predatory, I can add this to my evidence pile. Finally got to breakfast after 1PM. Expecting storms today. I should go ahead and knock out Music Week.

Email (29 messages):

• TomDispatch: The President of Peace Makes War on the Planet.
• The Intercept: How Trump's New Counterterrorism Strategy Puts You at Risk (Nick Turse).
• Joe Levy: approves my edits to Dean's List (one label change, done).
• Tom Carson: Trump And What Army? As Memorial Day looms, let's take stock of how POTUS values America's military: "As so often with the Trump maladministration, unbelievably crass boorishness operates to mask sickening depredation."
• Hanna Heating and Air Conditioning invoice for $306.00.
• New Substack subscriber: Lee Rice Epstein (back to 100?).

I tried making dinner. I had some peanut sauce left over from the Indonesian birthday dinner I wanted to use. I recalled a recipe for fried catfish in peanut sauce, and picked up some nuggets on Sunday. I dredged them in a combination of corn, potato, and chickpea flours, with some curry spices, and fried them. Then I scooped out half a cup of peanut sauce, added a can of coconut milk, brought that to a boil, then added the fish. Laura thought it was weird. I cooked some rice, then recooked it with onion and bacon and some chicken stock to soften it up a bit. I sauteed zucchini and red bell pepper, and two eggs, and added them in, along with ham, scallions, and cashews. Not a great dinner, but just the two of us, so no damage.

Various things left me feeling exceptionally blasé. I wrote up a fairly brief intro to Music Week, and thought I'd post it before the long-awaited storm finally hit (around 10PM). As I was getting ready, the power went out, momentarily but it disrupted things. Internet went down, then up, down, and up again. I did manage to post it. Watched some TV weather, which led into Kimmel, in real time for once. I worked a bit on the jigsaw, putting 4 pieces in. Given the difficulty of the puzzle, that counted as a good start. It's an out-of-focus picture of coffee beans, each more or less one piece in size. Superimposed is a magnifying class, which has an outline and brings the beans into focus, covering maybe 10% of the puzzle. The in-focus pieces are relatively easy to sort out, so I did them and the magnifying class first, while Laura tried to do the frame. After several days, I started working on the frame as well, and got it reasonably complete a day or two ago. The four pieces included 1 (of 2 open) in-focus, 1 attached to magnifying glass frame, and 2 attached to the border. It's going to be a very long slog.

Music Week

Expanded blog post, May archive (in progress).

Tweet: Music Week: 39 albums, 2 A-list

Music: Current count 45961 [45922] rated (+39), 12 [18] unrated (-6).

New records reviewed this week:

• Steven Bernstein/Scotty Hard: ResoNation Trio/Ultra Resonance (2025 [2026], Royal Potato Family): [cd]: B+(***) [06-05]
• Jane Ira Bloom/Brian Shankar Adler: Once Like a Spark (2025, Adhyâropa): [sp]: B+(***)
• Dawn Clement: Dear Ms. Dearie (2025 [2026], Origin): [cd]: B+(**) [05-22]
• Braxton Cook: Not Everyone Can Go (2025, Nettwerk): [sp]: B+(*)
• Chick Corea: Forever Yours: The Farewell Performance (2020 [2025], Candid): [sp]: B+(**)
• George Cotsirilos: In the Wee Hours (2017-25 [2026], OA2): [cd]: B+(*) [05-22]
• Sylvie Courvoisier Trio: Éclats - Live in Europe (2025 [2026], Intakt): [sp]: B+(***)
• Theo Croker/Sullivan Croker: Play (2023 [2025], ACT Music): [sp]: B
• Amalie Dahl's Dafnie Extended: Live at Moldejazz (2025 [2026], Sonic Transmissions): [bc]: B+(*)
• Daoud: Ok (2025, ACT Music): [sp]: B+(*)
• Django Festival Allstars: Evolution (2026, Motéma): [sp]: B+(*)
• Gabriel Espinosa: The Brazilian Project (2022-25 [2026], Origin): [cd]: B+(*) [05-22]
• Christine Fawson: It Could Happen to You (2026, self-released): [cd]: B+(***) [06-01]
• Michael Formanek: New Digs (2025 [2026], Intakt): [sp]: B+(***)
• David Friedman/Tony Miceli: Glow (2019 [2026], SteepleChase): [sp]: B
• Gordon Grdina/Jim Black: Martian Kitties (2025, 577): [sp]: B+(**)
• Gordon Grdina/Russ Lossing: Turnpike (2026, Attaboygirl): [sp]: B+(**)
• Gordon Grdina's Nomad Trio: Ash (2026, Attaboygirl): [bc]: B+(**)
• Sven-Åke Johansson With Pierre Borel/Seymour Wright/Joel Grip: Two Days at Café Oto (2025, Otoroku): [bc]: B+(***)
• Aubrey Johnson: The Lively Air (2025 [2026], Greenleaf Music): [sp]: B+(**)
• Aubrey Johnson/Helen Sung/Dave Douglas: Lives of the Saints: Portraits in Song With Words by David Hadju (2025, Sunnyside): [sp]: B+(*)
• David Lord: Way Over the Rainbow (2025, Cloud Ear): [sp]: B+(*)
• Andrew Moorhead: Mirage (2025 [2026], OA2): [cd]: B+(***) [05-22]
• Azuka Moweta and His Anioma Brothers Band of Africa: Kenechukwu (2026, Palenque): [sp]: A-
• Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra: Ellington Masterworks (2024 [2026], MCG Jazz): [cd]: B+(***) [06-12]
• Vaiano's Paisanos: Vaiano's Paisanos (2026, Jalopy): [sp]: B+(***)
• Vaiano's Paisanos: Viaino's Paisanos Presents Rachel Meirs & Van Burchfield (2025, Jalopy): [bc]: B+(**)
• Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble: Groove in the Face of Adversity (2025, Mack Avenue): [sp]: B+(***)
• Rich Willey: Laid Back Vol. 1 (2025 [2026], Boptism): [cd]: B+(*) [05-30]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Ray Charles: No One Does It Like . . . Ray Charles! (1962-65 [2025], Tangerine): [sp]: A-
• Duke Ellington: Copenhagen 1964 (1964 [2026], Storyville): [bc]: A-
• Bill Evans: Portraits at the Penthouse: Live in Seattle (1966 [2025], Resonance): [sp]: B+(**)
• Benny Golson: Gone With Golson (1959 [2025], Craft): [sp]: B+(***)
• Morphine: Bootleg Detroit [Deluxe Edition] (1994 [2025], Rykodisc/Rhino): [sp]: B+(**)
• Lester Young: Lester Leaps In: Live at Birdland 1951-1952 (1951-52 [2025], Liberation Hall): [bc]: B+(***)

Old music:

• Azuka Moweta and His Anioma Brothers Band: Ekobe Global (2025, Palenque): [sp]: B+(***)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Ballister + Luke Stewart: Clocking the Wheel (Aerophonic) [07-10]
• Maya De Vitry: All My Faith (Mad Maker Studios) [07-24]
• Charles Downs Quartet: Inner (ESP-Disk') [05-15]
• Entropic Hop: The Quest for the Normal Is the Death of the Self (ESP-Disk') [05-15]

Daily Log

Another rough night sleeping. Got up, read the next-to-last chapter of Acemoglu/Johnson (on "breaking democracy"), and came down around 10:30. Laura needed to watch Nashville for her film discussion group, so I agreed to watch it with her, but she couldn't get the subtitles working on the TV, so she wound up watching it on her computer, leaving me out. This is the third Altman film they've done recently, and I can't say as I've much enjoyed any of them. I finished catching up with the Christgau CG database. No May column yet, so presumably there should be one this week. I've sent him proofs, and other messages, but rarely hear anything back from him. One idea is for me to write something on Substack that comments on his Dean's List, then include capsule reviews for some albums he never reviewed. Not sure when to do that within the series of pieces I'm contemplating (most immediately: Loose Tabs exec summary, DownBeat poll critique; less urgently: comfort food [from January], gerrymandering, Trump top-ten).

Laura has her film group today. After that, she wanted to go to grocery store, but looks like we'll get hit with a storm between 4-6PM. I don't have any real plans. Hot again today. Jigsaw puzzle is nothing but a bunch of blurry coffee beans. Laura usually puts the border together, before I start organizing the pieces and making inroads, but she was stumped, and I wound up working on the border the last several days. I finally came up with something that looks plausible, giving us a border of 36x28 pieces. There's one interior section with the outline of a magnifying glass, where the beans under it are in focus. That was fairly easy to sort out, so I did it while waiting for Laura to figure out the border. Once that was done, I started working on the border. We have different theories on what to do from here.

Email (8 messages):

• Project Syndicate: Subject line: "America's superpower suicide." That comes from an article by Timothy Snyder. Also possibly interesting: How I Became a Manufacturing Skeptic (Dani Rodrik); How Russia Lost Friends and Global Influence (Nina L Krushcheva); Who Will Solve the AI Productivity Puzzle? (Robin Rivaton).
• Christian Iszchak: An Acute Case.
• Brad Luen: Semipop Life.

Daily Log

Tired last night. Went upstairs shortly after 2AM, leaving the last in the Mahjongg series unsolved (after 15 minutes; first thing this morning was to restart it, solving it in reasonable time). Came down at 10:30. Still have 60 pages (plus the bibliographic essay) in Acemoglu/Johnson. I wasn't expecting so much on AI, but what's there is good, and builds upon my recent reads of Doctorow and Wu. Woke up thinking about the Trump top ten piece. One thought is that it's important that the top ten not be ranked. They form an interrelated cluster, so the list order should track their relations. Where you start is somewhat arbitrary, but climate change might be a good place to start. It's big and obvious, but also introduces at least four recurrent themes:

1. The primacy of faith over science.
2. Abuse of government and power.
3. The central focus on graft.
4. Opportunity costs.

The first three will emerge as points on their own. (This is the single best example of opportunity costs. While not a bullet item on its own, that will emerge as a recurrent theme. Second item can be the excessive promotion of religion. That leads us into Israel and Iran, where a second point could be militarism in general, followed by ICE in particular. I might do the attack on democracy next, and the politicization of the courts. Or I could slip in graft somewhere. It's certainly a recurrent theme, but I'm not sure whether it is a driving force or simply a bad habit, as natural to Trump as breathing and lying. The shakedowns of law firms and other businesses, and the monetization of pardons, belong somewhere. Somewhere we need to add the destruction of the civil service, and more generally of public trust. I could end with the vanity projects.

My original idea was to follow up the top ten with five items where the backlash could push us into new territory. That may take a second article.

Email (7 messages):

• Laura sent me mail, under subject "I don't understand this": Seems to be a problem with too many pronouns, so let's clarify: "Meanwhile, Harris and Clinton painted themselves as stalwart devotees of the liberal-globalist status quo. So while on any nerdy policy survey they [Harris and Clinton] should have fared much better [got more votes] than Trump, at least Trump acknowledged problems [that] needing fixing, and their [Harris/Clinton/all Democrats'] intense hatred of the man [Trump], even more than anything he himself [Trump] said, made them [the voters] think of him [Trump] as their champion." Last part should be rewritten. It's not clear to me whether anyone actually thinks Trump has solutions to their problems, but they find hope in his ambiguity, while being pretty certain that Clinton/Obama/Biden/Harris are responsible for the problems, and have no interest in fixing them.

PS: I tried posting a chunk of the above to Facebook. I also added this as a comment:

Background: I tried pitching TomDispatch (which I've followed since 2002) on a piece, but got turned down ("not taking on new writers"). Being a stubborn sod, I didn't want to leave it at that. I noticed that the editor has been writing a series of increasingly frantic anti-Trump rants, as well as always cycling back to the climate change issue. So I thought my in might be to write my own anti-Trump harangue. I started with the idea of a top-20 list, and I've been refining it down in my head. When/if I write it, I'll give him another chance. Otherwise, it will just go out on my Substack (which is still shy of 100 subscribers; more good stuff coming out there over the next few weeks, including some music and possibly some cooking).

Daily Log

Again didn't sleep well. Woke up at 7. Read some, and went back to sleep, but got up again at 9. Took a shower and came down at 10. Already don't remember whether I fed the dog. He came down with me, and isn't still here, so I probably did. These short term memory lapses are not unique, and disturbing. Music Week went up last night. I finished the DownBeat poll, collecting a lot of notes. Fenix is supposed to come over around noon to hook up the mini-split. I have a slight worry, because when we moved the unit back outside, Doug shoved it into place instead of picking it up, and scraped some of the surface material off. I doubt that matters, but will talk to the roofer about it. Reinstallation will be a major milestone, just in time for record-breaking heat today (94F forecasted, 92F is the record). Expecting storms at some point. I also have to take books back to library today. Other than that, I should return to working on the Christgau database today. I still have several Substack ideas, but they can wait a bit. Weighed myself at 222.4 this morning. First time I've been over 220 in 6-8 months. I've been lax of late, and usually finish dinner wanting more. 220 was my goal when I got up to 285, so I don't feel too bad. But 220 was about what I weighed when Rebecca died, and I started my first big diet push.

Tom James and the HVAC guys came over to work on the mini-split. Tom thought the surface damage to the carport from sliding the unit can safely be ignored. The mini-split was handled by two genial guys from ICT Mechanical Contractor, who left the unit in seemingly good working order. I left it running until Laura went upstairs for a nap and complained about the cold. Only problem I noticed was that the GFCI outlet on the patio wasn't working and couldn't be reset. I should pick a cooler day and go out there and replace it. I have a whole drawer full of outlets. I still need to put the tools into the tote bag, and should now have motivation for that. I also went to the library. I checked out a book by Dan Wang, Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future; also a cookbook by Mia Castro, Cocina Puerto Rico. The latter could be occasion for a birthday-ish dinner. Not very different from Cuban I have done. Laura will have to figure out the schedule.

Email (31 messages, all today):

• Chuck Eddy: Hiring, Firing, Fishing, Following, Flatlining. Latter refers to his Substack subscription base. While the X (time) axis is labeled, the Y axis is not, so unclear how many subscribers he has. But if you want to see flatlining, look at my chart. I started on July 14, hit 60 on August 24 (+40 days), 80 on November 21, and am currently stuck at 99 (since April 8, no net change in 37 days).
• OR Books is pushing Robert Edwards: Resisting the Right: How to Survive the Gathering Storm, which was published in 2024, so may be dated by now. Possible interest at this point is to get some measure of reasoned anticipation before Trump actually took office. But I have little faith in his survival tips.
• Mike Konczal: The Weirdness of Jay Powell's Legacy: "I think he did a good job. I think he'll be remembered well."
• RiotRiot: Interview with CMAT.
• Robert Wright: Trump's accidental triumph in Beijing.
• GLC May event: Beth McDonald: Recycling at the ProKansas Center.

Daily Log

Bad a bad night sleeping, at one point getting up to swap in a new CPAP cushion. Made it a bit past 10, then read some, and came down. Writing this at noon, and feeling tired and irritable. While I made the cutover for Music Week yesterday, I decided to do the DownBeat Critics Poll: see my notes. I'm doing the whole grab-the-ballot thing, then sorting each category into two tiers, then picking my votes. It's very slow, even with no commentary — something I could add later, if later ever comes. Got through guitar last night, so start on bass today. Aside from bass and drums, that's mostly categories I don't care about, so I need to just plow through them. But there will be two more album lists, which even if they're mostly bullshit will serve as checklists. I'm expecting this to take three more hours, so I better get along with it. I don't see any email I need to deal with right now, so later for that.

Email (39 messages, didn't get to them until 7:25):

• TomDispatch: Frida Berrigan, Every Warship Launched Is a Local Disaster

Music Week

Still in notebook for May 13, but posted on May 14.

Daily Log

Woke up about six. Went back to sleep, until 10 or so. Read some, marking one passage to write about. Came down around 11. Nice weather. I went out in backyard with dog, and watered some. Loose Tabs went up last night. One of my bigger ones, and (I hope) one of the better edited ones. My idea of writing up a companion piece for Substack didn't pan out, but I have the stub file open. I'll work on that today, along with Music Week. DownBeat Critics Poll ballot due on May 15 (IIRC), so maybe I'll do that today. Estimates that it takes less than an hour to complete are bullshit. Usually takes me 6-8, and that's only because the increasing aggravation factor leads me to short-circuit the latter half of the ballot. Still, if I do it today, I can link to my notes in Music Week, and get it out of the way.

Finished jigsaw yesterday. Drawing of New York Public Library, with lots of lines, scattered pedestrians, taxis in the foreground, trees, some sky. The sort of puzzle one can make quick, steady progress of. Took 3-4 days. New puzzle is just a spread of coffee beans: aside from a magnifying glass, same thing across 1000 pieces. It will probably take us 3-4 weeks. Still waiting for mini-split install. Hanna is scheduled for the main AC on May 18. Looks like some 90+F weather between now and then.

Email (43 messages, some leftover):

• Laura forwarded a book pitch from David Reich, a novella and collection of short stories called Jazzers. Main piece is about two saxophonists in Boston, and a music critic named "David Reich." Laura wanted to know if I knew him (of him). No.
• Brad Luen (Semipop life): 1946 faves. "Continue reading this post for free in the Substack app."
• Sen. Roger Marshall: Boeing's $1 Billion Investment in Wichita. I guess they're back, as the Airlines is not the only Spirit to have failed this year.
• Belated like for Iran War: The Three Questions.

Music Week

Expanded blog post, May archive (in progress).

Tweet: Music Week: 41 albums, 6 A-list

Music: Current count 45922 [45881] rated (+41), 18 [14] unrated (+4).

New records reviewed this week:

• أحمد [Ahmed]: Play Monk (2025 [2026], Otoroku): [sp]: A-
• J. Cole: The Fall-Off (2026, Cole World/Dreamville/Interscope, 2CD): [sp]: B+(**)
• Mikaela Davis: Graceland Way (2026, Kill Rock Stars): [sp]: B+(*)
• Alabaster DePlume: Dear Children of Our Children, I Knew: Epilogue (2026, International Anthem, EP): [sp]: B+(**)
• Friko: Something Worth Waiting For (2026, ATO): [sp]: B
• The Ghost Wolves: Consumer Waste (2024, Saustex): [sp]: B+(**)
• Hang on the Box: Spiritual War (2025, Beijing Modern Sky Cultural Development): [sp]: B+(**)
• Jasper Høiby's 3 Elements: Conversations of Hope (2026, Edition): [bc]: B+(**)
• Peter Holsapple: The Face of 68 (2025, Label 51): [sp]: B
• David Janeway Trio: Live at Blue LLama (2024 [2026], SteepleChase): [cd]: B+(*)
• Ingrid Jensen: Landings (2025 [2026], Newvelle): [dl]: B+(***)
• Kneecap: Fenian (2026, Heavenly): [sp]: A-
• Loveseat: Our Way (2025, Reckless Pedestrian): [sp]: A-
• Brian Lynch: Torch Bearers (2024-25 [2026], Holistic MusicWorks): [sp]: B+(***)
• Doug MacDonald: Tribute to South Central (2025 [2026], Dmac Music): [cd]: B+(**) [06-01]
• Jennifer Madsen: Girl Talk (2026, SingBaby Productions): [cd]: B+(**) [06-26]
• Media Puzzle: New Racehorse (2026, Impressed): [sp]: B+(*)
• Melanie C: Sweat (2026, Red Girl/Virgin): [sp]: B+(***)
• Michaela Anne: These Are the Days (2026, Georgia June): [sp]: B+(**)
• Kacey Musgraves: Middle of Nowhere (2026, Lost Highway): [sp]: B+(***)
• Octo Octa: Sigils for Survival (2026, T4T LUV NRG): [sp]: B+(***)
• Sergio Pereira: Colors of Time (2025 [2026], Sergio Pereira Music): [cd]: B+(***) [05-15]
• Leigh Pilzer: Keep Holding On (2025 [2026], Strange Woman): [cd]: B+(***) [06-19]
• Jefferson Ross: Low Country Wedding (2026, self-released): [sp]: A-
• Bobby Sanabria Multiverse Big Band: Arsenio and Beyond: Live at the Bronx Music Hall (2025 [2026], Jazzheads): [cd]: B+(*)
• Christopher Sánchez: Latin Jazz Meets Opera (2026, Zoho): [cd]: B+(***)
• Joe Syrian Motor City Jazz Octet: A Blue Time (2023-25 [2026], Circle 9): [cd]: B+(**)
• Adia Vanheerentals: Taking Place (2025, Relative Pitch): [sp]: B
• XG: The Core (2026, Xgalx): [sp]: A-

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Fight the Fire: Digital Reggae, Conscious Roots and Dub in Nigeria 1986-91 (1986-91 [2026], Soundway): [bc]: B+(***)
• The Oscar Peterson Trio: At Baker's Keyboard Lounge: The Complete Recordings (1960 [2026], Verve, 2CD): [sp]: B+(***)
• This Is Lorelei: Box for Buddy, Box for Star [Super Deluxe] (2022 [2026], Double Double Whammy, 2CD): [sp]: B+(**)
• Mike Westbrook Orchestra: The Cortège: Live at the BBC 1980 (1980 [2025], Cadillac): [bc]: B+(**)

Old music:

• Barbara Carr: The Best of Barbara Carr (1997-2001 [2003], Ecko): [sp]: B+(***)
• Justin Golden: Golden Country: Volume 1 (2024, Vocal Rest): [bc]: B+(**)
• Justin Golden: Golden Country: Volume 2 (2024, Vocal Rest): [bc]: B+(**)
• Hang on the Box: Yellow Banana (2001, JingWen/Scream): [sp]: B+(**)
• Jefferson Ross: Azalea (2008, Deep Fried Discs): [sp]: B+(***)
• Jefferson Ross: Hymns to the Here and Now (2011, Deep Fried Discs): [sp]: B+(***)
• Jefferson Ross: Isle of Hope (2013, Deep Fried Discs): [sp]: B+(**)
• Jefferson Ross: Dogwood Cats (2015, Deep Fried Discs): [sp]: B+(*)
• The Mike Westbrook Concert Band: Celebration (1967, Deram): [yt]: B+(***)

Grade (or other) changes:

• S.G. Goodman: Planting by the Signs (2025, Slough Water/Thirty Tigers: [sp]: [was: B+(**)] A-

Rechecked with no grade change:

• Body Type: Expired Candy (2023, Poison City): [sp]: B+(***)
• Margaret Glaspy: The Golden Heart Protector (2025, ATO, EP): [sp]: B+(***)
• Rhett Miller: A Lifetime of Riding by Night (2025, ATO): [sp]: B+(**)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Wayne Alpern: Varieties & Extravaganzas (Henri Elkan Music) [04-17]
• Kenny Barron/Ray Drummond/Ben Riley: So Many Lovely Things: Live in Brecon (1995, Elemental Music) [06-12]
• Chuck Bergeron: Bass & Face: Duets With Ten Premier Vocalists (Summit) [06-05]
• Steven Bernstein: ResoNation Trio (Royal Potato Family) [06-05]
• Adam De Lucia: The Man Who Would Be King (self-released) [08-07]
• Armen Donelian: Inquiry (Sunnyside) [06-05]
• Christine Fawson: It Could Happen to You (self-released) [06-01]
• Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra: Ellington Masterworks (MCG Jazz) [06-12]
• Rich Willey: Laid Back Vol. 1 (Boptism) [05-30]
• Zen Zadravec: New Paradigm (Marmite) [06-26]

Daily Log

Woke up real early. Read some. Tried going back to bed. Couldn't sleep. Came down at 10. I didn't get Loose Tabs posted last night, so finishing that was on my mind. Currently 279 links, 20782 words, so I don't expect to add much more: just scan back through what I have, fix up the formatting, maybe add some intros and extra comments. I'm also thinking I'll write a Substack piece with some meta-commentary, sort of an executive summary. I can kick that off this morning, and take notes along the way. Music Week can wait another day. By then I'll probably top 30 albums. Same for the Christgau CG work, where the pressure is all mine. Once that is done, I'll do a Substack piece on his Dean's List.

Email (25 messages, more to come):

• Wichita Public Library: 2 books (Tim Wu, Cory Doctorow) not renewed, so due May 15. I've finished them, so no problem. Both might be worth buying copies of, but no rush on that.
• TomDispatch: Juan Cole, The Strait of Hormuz Oil Crisis of 2026 Is the Biggest Ever
• Tom Carson: Triomphe the Insult Comic's Arc de Trumpe (More proof the Germans won World War II). "Trump can't imagine honoring anything about this country without first dishonoring whatever it's meant to Americans up to now." Also: "Our increasingly disheveled, decrepit, floundering President has long been the prisoner of two pasts. One is the unspeakably hideous imaginary America he thinks he's resurrecting. The other is our actual past, which Trump loathes as if it's a personal insult to him — and it is."

Loose Tabs

Posted tonight: Loose Tabs at 10:50 PM: 331 links, 23399 words. Longest since Feb. 27, 2026.

Daily Log

Came down about 11:30. Lots of Loose Tabs written (221 links, 16123 words), but I didn't post it yesterday. Today, most likely. Music Week will probably be pushed off until tomorrow. Currently at 27 new grades. I got the Christgau CG database updated through September, 2025, so I still have a fair amount of work to do on that. I expect to spend most of today writing. Still fairly decent weather, but expected to get hot later in the week, then storms over weekend. Thinking next Substack will fall out of Loose Tabs. I did that once before.

Email (13 messages):

• Brad Luen: 30 greatest living songwriters born outside the USA: I started thinking of omissions, but they all turned out to be dead (Leonard Cohen, Kurt Weill; I guess that explains why it was just Paul McCartney).

Daily Log

Woke up after 10, and came down after 11. Reading about Henry Ford's factory system. Was hot (nearly 90F) yesterday, but rained overnight and cooled off, so 53F now, still cloudy. I got the August 2025 CG done yesterday, before Laura talked me into watching the Peaky Blinders movie. Tommy Shelby dies (again?), while the mobe lives on, and the Nazis falter. Watched another episode of Criminal Record, first season, 6 (of 8; there is a second season, but not all out yet). Seems to have been a pivotal episode, ending as Hegarty (Peter Capaldi) seems ready to confess something to Lenker (Cush Jumbo). With two episodes left, probably bullshit, but a power shift. Plans today to keep doing what I've been doing. Jigsaw puzzle going fast.

Email (8 messages):

• Laura forwarded a piece by Sam McAfee on AI: The Risk of AI Writing Is Leadership Without Judgment: The Reality Behind the Singularity.

Daily Log

Woke up about 8. Read some, then tried to go back to sleep. Got some, getting up at 10:30. Picked a record from the CD cases that wasn't clearly identified by looking at it. Turns out to be Ani DiFranco's Which Side Are You On? The other CD in that panel is also unidentifiable. Vague memory says Fiona Apple, but when I look up the catalog number, I get Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here. Song titles were on the CD, so I should have been able to figure that out. Maybe I'll play it next. Because the CDs were hard to identify, I've skipped over them for many years.

Moved more CDs down to basement yesterday. I'm not going to have enough room down there just to dump everything, but it's a big help here. Kiosk now has 3 CDs and 6 books. Big thing to do today should be to start putting tools away. I moved the Loose Tabs drafts into their own blog file: 175 links, 12245 words. Nominally dated for tomorrow, but it's been ages since I've hit an initial deadline. I have very little Music Week listening so far (+17 rated). New jigsaw puzzle to work on.

Email (6 messages):

• Got a very minor Christgau website correction: a Mazzy Star song title.
• Robert Wright: China Bites Back: evidently two can play this sanctions game.
• Mike Konczal: The Irony of a Jobs Pickup That Lands Right Where It Started (and what tariffs and immigration have to do with it).
• Tom Carson: Frankenride 4. After a couple of these were "paid only," this installment appears.
• I wrote Art Protin a note, including hour shifts between NZ and here (17 hours at present, 18 without DST, so it's already Sunday there).

Daily Log

Woke up around 9:30, but didn't come down until nearly 11. We went grocery shopping yesterday. I picked up a couple ice trays. Our refrigerator has two ice makers, but both are leaking, and at present unusable. I've been making ice in trays in the bottom, but they too leak. I was going to order replacements, but saw I could buy 2 for $3.49 at Dillons, and figured why not? Turns out they don't fit in the area I've been using. I've solved that for now by putting some styrofoam packing strips under the trays. They're a little shaky, but works for now. I can probably find something more stable. The pile of leftover styrofoam was just the first thing I saw. I also finally turned the water off. We rarely use the refrigerated water, so that's little loss. Aside from leaking around the ice makers, a big problem is that water pools in the bottom of the refrigerator compartment, then freezes in a sheet up to 0.375 inch. This in turn locks the deli tray in, so we can't pull it out. It's big, and packed, but when frozen up only the front is readily accesible. Periodically I have to bust it out, and scrape all the ice off, but it always freezes up again in a couple days. I should have shut off the water long ago, but only thought of it today. I need to look into getting the unit repaired. In my experience, appliance repair is priced to encourage you to buy new stuff. Our Samsung is literally the biggest stand-alone refrigerator ever made, and the second ice maker was a nice bonus (especially after the main one messed up, as they always seem to do). I've done some shopping for standalone ice makers. The tabletop ones seem to be crap, and I don't have any space for one of the big ones. Laura's solution is to buy a new refrigerator, so I guess that's still an option.

I picked up the collapsed avalanche of CDs on my office floor, and put them into yet another basket. I've also started moving CDs from one of my bookshelf units, half of which was being used for CDs that I have little use for/interest in, but couldn't get rid of. I've started to clear that out, moving three baskets to the two 8-foot shelves I recently built in the basement. I have room for another 4-5 baskets down there, which won't solve the office clutter, but will be a big help. This also exposes a previously hidden row of books: tech books, music references, a couple dictionaries. Looking at that shelf, I see some obvious things to move out.

Other house work yesterday: I swapped the front storm door out for the lighter screen door. I have a pretty good system for storing the unused piece, so it's not a big deal, but the seasonal change is always welcome: the glass allows you to open the door without getting an instant blast of winter cold; the screen is lighter, and has no air resistance in closing. I also moved the jigsaw puzzles from the kiosk to an underused spot on top of one of the bookshelf units. Now we have three such units in the living room. Looks like I have several more I can use. I wanted to open up the space in the kiosk for more stuff (especially books). The availability of the jigsaw puzzles is a given.

Current jigsaw puzzle is nearing completion: probably today. No real plans today. I should move Loose Tabs draft to a blog file. Leaning toward "Representative Government" for Substack. I want to at least get started on catching up with Consumer Guide. I'll probably write a Substack post on that, but should put some work into it first. Also have DownBeat poll to answer to. And I should keep moving CDs to basement, and try to put the electrical tools in their bags. That sounds like quite a bit.

Email (54 messages):

• You May Know 70's Trivia: unsubscribed.
• Tom Carson: Edmund wilson, 1895-1945.
• Chuck Eddy: Where Nothing Is Ever Prostrate.

Opened up the blog file for Loose Tabs.

Daily Log

Woke up at 9. Read in the bathroom an hour. Thought about coming down, but put on the CPAP mask, and logged two more hours. Unclear how much of that was actually sleep, but the machine was impressed. Yesterday was pretty depressing, but not unproductive. I texted Doug about possibly working on the attic, and he jumped at the opportunity. I wanted to get the 2x4 joist extensions for the west side of the attic cut out and assembled. I already had the north wing cut and cobbled together. I figured adding a perpendicular (N-S) board behind the chimney would denote the west boundary there, with the rest tying into it. Same idea for the south-west wing. I'd run a boundary board across the joists, then fill them in with 45-inch pieces, so I could lay 4-foot decking on top. It got a little dicier toward the middle of the house, where the joists started running N-S instead of E-W. I figured out a grid for that, not extending quite as far west, and cut the 2x4s for them. I left it to Doug to secure them. I got all the boards up, but he quit around 5:30, with half secured, the other half in place but still needing screws. We didn't get around to adding any decking. I left it to him to decide when he wants to come back. I wound up sore, coughing/sneezing with crap I breathed, and otherwise disappointed. Probably unfair. In some ways it's a ridiculous project, and at my age there's little point in doing it.

Substack response remains underwhelming. I picked up a couple more items for Loose Tabs, but I haven't formalized the blog file yet. I'm exceptionally despondent working on it, not only finding it impossible to cover anything remotely approximating everything, but having to fight with all the paywalls. I've long benefitted from piggybacking on Laura's subscriptions, but they're getting increasingly difficult. I'm starting to wonder whether I should even bother (although in many cases the key info is provided in the titles and tag quotes, and who has time for tracking down every reference?).

So, what I wound up doing yesterday evening was starting my sort of the basement. It's hard to tell, but I made some progress. I have four Stearlite plastic drawer stack units, each with three fairly deep drawers and four shallower ones. I cleared them out, and started repacking them. One has electrical components. I had piled most of them, along with the electrical tools, on a back shelf, which I've largely cleared now. (Still have to do the tools, but they'll mostly go into square tool totes: one for AC, one for low-power cable work. I think they both have small parts cases, which I can load up with wire nuts, cable clips, etc., so for most jobs all I'll have to do is pick up one tool case, and maybe some extra parts, wire, etc.) I haven't made use of the new shallow-drawer unit yet, except to fill one with shims. (Turns out I have many more than remembered.)

I've also thrown a few things out, and set up a recycle bin, which I've filled and dumped once so far. I also brought a bunch of old JazzTimes up, and have already taken them out to the recycle dumpster. I took all of my spare baskets downstairs to help sorting, but I need to free a couple of them up. I had an avalanche of loose CDs last night. The obvious solution there would be to load up surplus from the office area, and move it to the recently cleared CD shelves downstairs. Then start weeding out and moving things to the kiosk. Also continue the tech book purge. Some pretty obvious ones downstairs, but probably more urgent to free up nearby space.

Still, woke up thinking of lots of possible Substack posts. I played Roger Miller a couple days back, and the songs keep cycling in my head. I wrote a piece about Miller and Tom T. Hall back in the 1990s, hoping the Voice might be interested, but Christgau passed, so it only exists on my website. That could be a Lookback. I still have the Dave Barry notes. I got some mail yesterday about gerrymandering, and wrote back about my "representative democracy" idea. At some point I should just write that up. I got a question about whether change has to run through the Democrats. My short answer is yes, but first you have to change the Democrats. Robert Christgau published his Dean's List today. I could write up some thoughts on that. I could dust off my unfinished chicken & dumplings post. I could start compiling old cooking notes. Lots of things keep popping into my mind. I have no idea what to do next.

Well, one idea is that I'm a year behind on the Christgau CG, so I really should catch up on that. Especially as it ties into the Dean's List.

Email (29 messages):

• Substack post "The Real Road to Serfdom": +1 like.
• Substack Open Tab: Emily Sundberg, writes "Feed Me," sends out 250 pieces per year, has over 10,000 paid subscribers.
• Robert Christgau: Dean's List.

A lot of churn on the Dean's List. Joe Yanosik came up with a list of 35 albums graded A- (or higher) during the year that were left off the list:

• Nakibembe Embaire Group: Nakibembe Embaire Group (Nyege Nyege Tapes '23) A
• Nandipha808: No Vocal Album (Stena Academy) A
• Champeta w/Edna Martinez: Diblo Dibala Special (NTS download). A
• Willie Nelson: Workin' Man: Willie Sings Merle (Legacy) A
• Grant Peeples: Code to Live By (Pina). A
• Tommy Womack: Live a Little (Schoolkids). A
• Aesop Rock: I Heard It's a Mess There Too (Rhymesayers). A
• Masaka Kids Africana: Greatful (Masak '21) A
• Charley Bliss: Forever (Lucky Number '24). A
• Schoolboy Q: Blue Lips (Interscope '24). A-
• Sabrina Carpenter: Short N Sweet (Island '24) A-
• Edna Martinez Presents Pico! (Strut) A-
• Hurray For the Ridf Raff: The Past Is Still alive (Nonesuch '24) A-
• Nobro: Set Your Pussy Free (Dine Alone '23) A-
• Towa Bird: American Hero (Interscope '24) A-
• Mdou Moctar: Funeral for Justice (Matador '24) A-
• Julien Baker & Torres: Send a Prayer My Way (Matador) A-
• Eli "Paperboy" Reed: Sings Walk-in and Talkin (Yep ROC) A-
• Aesop Rock: Black Hole Superette (Rhymesayers) A-
• Rory Block: Heavy on the Blues (MC) A-
• Lorde: Virgin (Universal New Zealand) A-
• From the Dirt: Colored Edge of Memory (Partial Lyrics) A-
• Joseph Kamaru: Heavy Combination 1996-2007 (Disciples) A-
• Gurf Morlix: Bristlecone (Rootball) A-
• Alick Nkhata: Radio Lusaka (Mississippi) A-
• Saint Pierre: Luck and Gravity (Mutchcrud) A-
• Luke Bell: The King Is Back (Thirty Tigers) A-
• Hammel on Trial: Dirty Xmas (Saustex) A-
• Thomas Anderson: Letters from Hermit Kingdom (Out There) A-
• Husker Du: 1985: The Miracle Year (Numero) A-
• Allo Darlin': Bright Nights (Slumberland) A-
• Nakibembe Embaire Group & Naoyuki Uchida: Phantom Keys (Nyege Nyege Tapes) A-
• Twisted Teens: Blame the Clown (Chain Smoking) A-
• Abdallah Oumbadougou: Amghar: Godfather of Tuareg Music Vol 1 (Petaluma '24) A-
• Michael Hampton: Into the Public Domain (Sound Mind) A-

Presumably all of these were reviewed since Jan. 2025, and none appeared on the 2024 list. I should check those and break them down to possible groupings. I'm thinking about writing a post of albums (non-jazz) on my list that he never reviewed. I may also knock out a second-guess checklist.

Daily Log

Woke up around 10:30. Came down an hour later. Cool again, 53F, mostly sunny now, but clouds this afternoon will cap the high at 56F. Would be an ideal day to work on the attic, but I'm already hurting. I did get Music Week published last night, following my "Real Road to Serfdom" Substack post. Music Week details quite a bit of writing over the last week. Not sure what I want to do today. Sent a text to Doug to see if he wants to work on attic. I don't particularly, but I could see trying to get some more framing down. Otherwise, I should start working on house stuff. But easier would be to just hack out Loose Tabs.

Email (65 messages, including leftovers):

• Rissalat from PubQ asked Christgau: "Do you write your Substack Notes one at a time, or do you batch them?" Aside from redundancies, he's posting 2-4 times a month, only to promote his own pieces, so he has no need for a batch scheduling service. But I have two major regular columns that are essentially batched up compilations of what could be Notes posts. Laura asked me to start publishing Loose Tabs on the fly. With Twitter and Bluesky, I keep running into character limits. I don't need much more than 256/280, at least for excerpt quotes, but it's a struggle to stay under those limits, and often the edits extend from discipline to garbling. Facebook is possible, but yuck. So while Notes doesn't have a lot of followers, it might work for me. But PubQ's batching tool doesn't seem very useful. The free tier is limited to 5 posts per month. The $5 basic package goes to 30 notes, with $12 (or $19?) necessary to get unlimited. Also requires that you use Chrome. Seems to impose a 280 character limit, which is worse than the direct interface.
• TomDispatch: Meanwhile, in El Salvador . . .
• Substack post: The Real Road to Serfdom. Shareable assets. 1 like, 1 new follower; Matt Walston sent me a text, and Susan Moir sent a note. Daily stats: 90 views, 1 likes, 0 subscriptions. My own copy got trapped in Yahoo's spam directory.
• "Your Vox membership is coming up for renewal in 45 days. The renewal price is $60 (additional taxes may apply)." I probably paid considerably less last year, with the assumption that I wouldn't renew at the threatened price.
• Art Protin: I asked him for feedback on my inflation piece. He does "have some comments to share," but is looking for a phone call.
• Pat Ciotti asked "a favor." Looks like a scam.
• The Nation sent out an ad from Civic Shout to "End Gerrymandering Now!" I wrote a reply, below.
• Substack introduces Open Tab. Doesn't sound useful.

My reply to the Civic Shout "End Gerrymandering Now!" email:

FYI, I've figured out a scheme that would put an end to gerrymandering. I've mentioned it numerous times on my blog, but have yet to write it up formally. Basically, we elect multiple candidates from each district, and give them each a vote weighting based on how many votes they actually got. Hence, someone who won a district with 80% of the vote would get four times the vote weighting of the runner-up who got 20% of the vote. Districts that break 51-49% would be weighed accordingly. Some minimal number of votes may be required, but it doesn't need to be very high. Currently, slightly over 50% of voters have a representative they voted for. Under this scheme, the share of voters with a representative would increase significantly. (Activists like to tell me to write to my Representative, but I live in a district where the Representative quite pointedly does not represent me.) That's why I call this system Representative Government. Also note that because it gets rid of "winner take all" districts, there will be much less incentive to flood campaigns with cash. I generally put little stock in arguing for technical fixes to problems with elections and such -- since one has very little ability to fix the system, the only real option we have is to beat it on its own terms. But this seems like a pretty obvious fix, and I've never seen it talked about elsewhere.

Daily Log

Came down about 10:45. I compiled for didn't post Music Week yesterday. I started working on a Substack post yesterday, and got probably half way through. It starts by discussing Wu's five-step process from monopoly to strongman dictatorship. I've covered that, but need to decide where to go from there. As I've noted, there is a lot of value in the policy proposals Wu and Cory Doctorow are pushing, but I'm skeptical that there is much political will to get them done. That's partly because they're too nerdy for most folks to understand (or care about), partly because they skirt the more fundamental issues that people can understand and get worked up over (like having companies, and for that matter governments, repeatedly screw them over). But the problem there is that political solutions to such problems are likely to be painful, not least to politicians who depend on rich donors to get elected.

Cooler today (56F now, high 60F, looks like patches of rain between noon and 3PM). Probably a decent attic work day, but I need to wrap up my writing. Laura has doctor appointment this afternoon. She lost Wordle last night, breaking a streak of over 365 days. Got caught on "*atch" words. She asked me for advice, but I didn't venture a guess. Turned out to be "latch," which I would have picked over a couple of her guesses (last one was "hatch," which tends to happen as we avoid doubling rare consonants). I have no streak, as working it would mess up her NYT account. She does have me doing Quordle, which she works up to finding the first word, leaving the other three for me. I cycle through 5 games there, losing one every 2-3 days, mostly Extreme when I can blame her using up most of the guesses. I use a calculator, which speeds things up considerably. She considers that cheating, but it saves me a lot of mental wheel-spinning, especially when there is only one possible word. It still leaves a fair amount of strategy, even if it is different.

Played Roger Miller the other day, and a medley of songs are wedged in my head. Of the novelty tunes, it's mostly "Kansas City Star" and "England Swings," but I'm also recalling later songs like "Little Green Apples," "Where Have All the Average People Gone," and "Song of the South."

Worked on my Substack post, and put it up. Also put up Music Week, which details various other writings. Didn't get around to logging email, so most left over for tomorrow.

Daily Log

Woke up early, but managed six hours of sleep. Read the intro chapter of Power and Progress, before entering the section on 19th century canal building. They have AI on the mind, but much of that is still speculation. I didn't get the website updated yesterday, so I still have my q&a to publish, as well as the archival version of "Lookback: Iraq 2023." I did write a fair amount on the eternally hapless Loose Tabs. Presumably I'll do a Music Week today. I've pretty much exhausted my demo queue, but have new mail to unpack.

One thing I am disturbed by is that I seem to have missed a whole day without pills (probably Saturday, as I took Saturday's pills yesterday). I've sometimes discovered missing the morning pills that night, so I usually just take them, then the evening pills before I go to bed. No obvious problems, but this time the mental lapse is chilling. While I clearly have a lot of work to do today, at this point (10:30) I feel like doing nothing.

Email (11 messages):

• Tom Carson: Our Nixon (from 1994)

Music Week

Expanded blog post, May archive (in progress).

Tweet: Music Week: 31 albums, 3 A-list

Music: Current count 45881 [45850] rated (+31), 14 [10] unrated (-4).

New records reviewed this week:

• Atmosphere: Jestures (2025, Rhymesayers Entertainment): [sp]: A-
• MC Paul Barman & Kenny Segal: Antinomian Pandemonium (2026, Fused Arrow): [bc]: B+(**)
• Black Nile: Indigo Garden (2026, Hen House Studios): [sp]: B+(**)
• Ryan Blotnick: The Woods (2024 [2026], Fishkill): [dl]: B+(**)
• Bobby Broom: Notes of Thanks (2025 [2026], Steele): [sp]: B+(*)
• Garret T. Capps: I Still Love San Antone (2026, Nudie): [bc]: B+(***)
• Jessye DeSilva: Glitter Up the Dark (2024 [2026], Nine Athens): [sp]: B+(**)
• Richard Gilman-Opalsky: A Fierce and Gentle Force (2025 [2026], Edgetone): [cd]: B+(***)
• Ize Trio: Global Prayer (2023-25 [2026], self-released): [cd]: B+(**) [06-12]
• Paul Kahn: Willingness (Carl Cat, EP): [cd]: B- [06-19]
• Kehlani: Kehlani (2026, Atlantic): [sp]: B+(**)
• Ella Langley: Dandelion (2026, Sawgod/Columbia): [sp]: B+(***)
• Los Thuthanaka: Wak'a (2026, self-released, EP): [bc]: B
• Myra Melford/Satoko Fujii: Katarahi (2024 [2026], RogueArt): [cd]: A-
• Hedvig Mollestad Weejuns: Bitches Blues (2026, Rune Grammofon): [sp]: B+(***)
• The Monochrome Set: Lotus Bridge (2026, Tapete): [sp]: B
• Maisy Owen: Dark on a Sunny Day (2026, Tompkins Square): [sp]: B+(*)
• Andreas Røysum Ensemble: With Marvin Tate (2025, Motvind): [bc]: B+(***)
• Maria Schneider Orchestra: American Crow (2025 [2026], ArtistShare, EP): [os]: B
• Serokolo 7: Maramfa Musick Pro (2026, Nyege Nyege Tapes): [bc]: B+(*)
• Bria Skonberg: Brass (2025 [2026], Cellar Music Group): [sp]: B+(**)
• Harry Styles: Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. (2026, Erskine/Columbia): [sp]: B+(*)
• Tokischa: Amor & Droga (2026, Warner Latina): [sp]: B+(***)
• Álvaro Torres Trio: Mairena (2025 [2026], Fresh Sound New Talent): [cd]: B+(**)
• The Twilight Sad: It's the Long Goodbye (2026, Rock Action): [sp]: B+(**)
• Steve Wilson: Enduring Sonance (2025 [2026], Smoke Sessions): [sp]: B+(*)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Terry Callier: At the Earl of Old Town (1967 [2026], Time Traveler, 2CD): [cd]: B+(**)
• Antoine Dougbé: Antoine Dougbé Et L'Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou (1977-82 [2026], Analog Africa): [bc]: A-
• Roy Hargrove: Bern (2000 [2026], Time Traveler): [cd]: B+(**)

Old music:

• Ryan Blotnick: Kush (2016, Songlines): [sp]: A-
• Terry Callier: The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier (1964 [1968], Prestige): [sp]: B
• The Monochrome Set: Strange Boutique (1980, Dindisc): [sp]: B+(*)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Dawn Clement: Dear Ms. Dearie (Origin) [05-22]
• George Cotsirilos: In the Wee Hours (OA2) [05-22]
• Gabriel Espinosa: The Brazilian Project (Origin) [05-22]
• David Janeway Trio: Live at Blue LLama (SteepleChase) [05-04]
• Doug MacDonald: Tribute to South Central (Dmac Music) [06-01]
• Jennifer Madsen: Girl Talk (SingBaby Productions) [06-26]
• Andrew Moorhead: Mirage (OA2) [05-22]
• Sergio Pereira: Colors of Time (Sergio Pereira Music) [05-15]
• Leigh Pilzer: Keep Holding On (Strange Woman) [06-19]
• Bobby Sanabria Multiverse Big Band: Arsenio and Beyond: Live at the Bronx Music Hall (Jazzheads) [04-10]
• Christopher Sánchez: Latin Jazz Meets Opera (Zoho) [05-08]
• Joe Syrian Motor City Jazz Octet: A Blue Time (Circle 9) [04-24]

Daily Log

Didn't get around to starting this entry until 12:37, so details on sleep have already faded from memory. Started reading Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity, by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson. First few pages seem promising. One idea that occurs to me is that the paths of technological development and capitalism were largely parallel (congruent?) for a long time, such that capitalism was the most efficient way to produce technological development. But the goals have always been slightly different, and that divergence is widening, as capital focuses ever more sharply on extracting rather than creating value.

Warmed up today, 81F now, expected to reach 86F. Not too hot to work outside, but I seem to have missed my window for working in the attic. C'est domage. I'm still pretty sore as it is. I got the Substack post on Iraq 2003 up yesterday. I should update the website today, as I have three answers to reader questions, plus the noel/ss archive. Thinking about doing another fairly quick post based on something from Tim Wu's The Age of Extraction: he offers a five-stage progression beginning with economic concentration and ending in a strongman dictatorship. While the first three stages appear inexorable (concentration, extraction, resentment), do the last two (corruption, dictatorship) really follow? Perhaps in the US they have: corruption is off the charts, and Trump certainly wants to be a dictator. But the more classic consequence of such resentment is revolution, or some sort of counterrevolutionary reform. It seems that may be worth a bit of thought.

I'm also slowly inching toward some house sorting work. I did a tiny bit of looking around in the basement yesterday. At some point I'll get back to that. Meanwhile, I'm probably just going to write, and do some website work.

Email (39 messages, most left over from Friday):

• My Substack post: Lookback: Iran 2003. Likes: 2.
• Substack April 2026 stats: 99 subscribers (+3), 247 post reads (+132; i.e., 2 posts vs. 1).
• Got my invite to vote in the 79th Annual DownBeat Critics Poll. They're offering a promo hat this year instead of the usual T-shirt.
• Robert Wright: AI and the New McCarthyism. Bernie Sanders has proposed a moratorium on new AI data center construction utnil some safeguards are implemented. AI flacks (Nathan Leamer is first named, though behind him you find moguls like Marc Andreessen and Greg Brockman) are accusing him of treason, surrendering the AI race to China.
• Phil Overeem: My Ten -- Scratch That -- Twenty-Five Commandments of Teaching
• Christian Iszchak: An Acute Case: Unheard: Atmosphere: Jestures (*); Harry Styles: Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally (B+).
• Tom Carson: Frankenride 3 (novel in progress, paid only).
• Chuck Eddy: Toledo Mud Hens Forever.
• Brad Luen: The Bullpen 012.
• TomDispatch: Tom Engelhardt: A World in Trumple Deep
• Substack: Stats for Lookback: Iraq 2003: 113 views, 2 likes, 0 subscriptions.

Daily Log

Woke up from a dream where my car had been stopped by police, who were intent on searching everything. A lawyer friend was also mentioned: the two of us supposedly had "bookmarks" that the police were exploring, so I tried calling her. After getting someone else, I woke up. Read some more by Tim Wu, bringing me near the end. Came down around 10:30. Playing Roger Miller.

I reached a possible end to the "Lookback: Iraq" substack post, but I didn't post it. Today. I need to reconsider the end. Trump's great innovation in US foreign policy is that he doesn't even pretend to give a fuck. Bush still had enough sense of right and wrong that he felt compelled to lie when he wanted to do something bad. My classic example was how he called his timber company clear cut giveaway the "Healthy Forests Initiative." Another example was "No Child Left Behind." He sure snookered Ted Kennedy with that one. I hated Bush's Saudi-inspired "guest worker" program, but in some ways it would have been better than the combination of blind indifference/belligerence that de facto exists. Trump isn't much worse, but he's much more shameless about it. I think that shame among sinners is overrated, but shamelessness is still worse. Hypocrites erode standards, but at least they accept them as principles.

I also wrote answers to a couple of questions. Didn't post them either, but I did manage quite a bit of writing yesterday. New jigsaw started. It's going to be relatively difficult.

Email (74 messages, mostly left over from Friday):

• Tom Carson: Can We Please Impeach Trump's Casting Director? Favorite line here is "Or gaze worshipfully at Pete Hegseth, who believes that war is a continuation of date rape by other means." And that's about 10 good lines in, with more to follow, like: "A nod to Chuck Schumer, living proof that you don't send Bob Cratchit to do Ebenezer Scrooge's job."
• Shock Hosting support notice of cPanel security vulnerability. Seems to be fixed.

I posted to Substack my Lookback: Iraq 2003 piece (also here.

Daily Log

Opened this file up at 11:10, so events like waking up and coming down track back an hour or so. I put a disc from one of the Velvet Underground bootleg sets on, and perused Facebook. I saw an item about how Bob Christgau hasn't published his 2025 Dean's List yet, so I added this comment:

I should perhaps admit that the last ent_date in the cg database is 2025-03-12, so I am over 12 months behind. While he has dictated a 9-month quarantine for CG reviews, there are some that should be visible but aren't yet in the system. On the other hand, even with the quarantine, you should be able to see get_ydate.php, but due to my sloth you cannot. I've fallen behind like this in the past, and when he's complained I've snapped to, but that hasn't happened here (yet). I've fallen way behind on my own shit. I only got two substack posts out in April, leaving a third one in my drafts file. My streamnotes indexing is still stuck in 2025. I have an interesting question pending about my "motivation," so I'm giving that some thought. The relevant part here is that I'm mostly demand-driven, and he's been pretty quiet for some time now. I don't know what that means. That I'm feeling the same may point to age, but that's hardly the only excuse for malaise these days.

I opened an extra terminal window and tab in Workspace 6 in case I want to start working on the CG database. Many other things on my mind today. I made a small but high calorie dinner yesterday. It started when I picked up a rack of pork ribs the other day. One of the easiest ways to deal with them is to put them in a Korean marinade, then roast them (45 minutes at 350F). My soybean paste was old and crumbly, and I cut way back on the chili paste. I didn't have an apple, but opened a can of pineapple instead, along with an individual serving of pears, and I scraped the bottom of a jar of hoisin sauce into the mix, before letting them marinate overnight. I was going to make stir-fried lima beans, and maybe a bit of rice. Laura suggested inviting Janice & Tim over, so I figured I'd scale up a fried rice, and make a dessert.

For fried rice, I've been riffing on Tropp's ham & egg recipe, adding curry spices and extra vegetables. I had half an onion left from the marinade, so added garlic, ginger, and a shallot, and fried that as a base, with some curry powder and chopped ham and soppresata. On the side, I sauteed some shredded carrots, a red bell pepper, a zucchini, and the usual eggs. I folded them into the rice, along with scallions and pine nuts. I only used 1 cup of rice, but it made for a big bowl.

For dessert, I made gluten-free brownies, with almond flour and cocoa for structure, and black walnuts. I topped each with chocolate chip ice cream, my leftover Mexican ganache (made from chocolate with cinnamon and coconut cream), and whipped cream. I doubt the brownies are quite as good as my ATK recipe, but they came pretty close. Ate way too much yesterday, and got virtually nothing else done. Well, I did write a bit on the Iraq War trawl, but failed to get anything I could post in April, leaving me with just two Substack posts. I am coming to realize that my idea of simply numbering the NOEL posts is a bad one. I need to be able to knock out small bits while working on longer ones. I read a bit today in Tim Wu about five stages of economic concentration from monopoly to extraction to mass resentment to democratic failure to strongman rule (pp. 122-124, "The Road to Serfdom"). I could do some kind of riff on that. But I think the focus shouldn't be the stages, but the choices in moving from one to the next. None strike me as necessary, let alone proper.

Finished breakfast at 12:30. Hard to know what to try to do today. Playing Hedvig Mollestad.

Email (53 messages): Didn't get around to looking at these.

Apr 2026

Jun 2026