Month: December 2024

Where to find Paul Krugman now


Source: Wikimedia Commons.

On December 9, Paul Krugman wrote his last column for the New York Times. He had been writing for the Times for almost 25 years. Now more than ever, with four years of Trumpian madness ahead of us, we need intellects like Krugman’s. Krugman is still with us. He has moved to Substack.

His most recent Substack post, from December 26, is Trump’s Great Illusion: Conquest doesn’t make a modern nation — or its leader — great.

Axios reports this morning on a poll which found that two-thirds of Americans say they are limiting their intake of political news. An exception is Fox News, where viewership has increased since election day.

I can only guess what this means, but here’s my guess. Of all the low-information clodpolls who voted for Trump, Fox-watchers are the sickest and also the most highly motivated. There are not as many of them as we sometimes think. During prime time, about 2.5 million people watch Fox News. That’s far less than 1 percent of the American population. They are probably basking in post-election triumphalism.

As for the rest of us, people are exhausted.

But what about us high-information types?

I don’t think it’s just me, because it’s something that shows up constantly (as contempt and, often, as vitriol) in the comments section of political pieces in the New York Times and the Washington Post. We are fed up with MAGA-cowed both-sides “journalism” that treats MAGA depravity and disinformation as something to be taken seriously. We blame this sanewashing and the normalization of depravity and disinformation for helping Trump get back into the White House.

I have no idea why Paul Krugman retired from the New York Times, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he was under pressure to both-sidesify his columns. At Substack, we will hear what Krugman is thinking knowing that mid-level editors at the New York Times, nervous for their jobs, aren’t pressuring Krugman in any way.

I am not among the many who have canceled their subscriptions to the New York Times and the Washington Post. Though their political reporting is not to be trusted, those two newspapers are still the only remaining news organizations in the country with the resources to cover everything else. And, besides, we need to monitor the degree to which the corporate media are capitulating to Trump and Trumpism.

Speaking only for myself, I’m as eager as always to try to figure out what’s going on in the world. But it’s clear that we’re in an era in which we must give far greater weight to independent voices, and far less weight to corporate sources trying to play both sides.

Clarifying the complicated

It’s a complicated world. Fortunately there are experts who have put extraordinary efforts into understanding it. We ordinary folk must rely on those experts. In a sea of propaganda and disinformation, the trick is to find the people who know the terrain and who aren’t trying to deceive us.

Sarah C. Paine is a historian and professor of strategy and policy at the U.S. Naval War College. Watching this video will require two and a half hours of your time. But I can’t imagine a quicker way to get a high-altitude view of what’s behind the conflicts that are roiling the world today, conflicts that each of us feel in our own lives, no matter how isolated we may think we are.

I have long argued that these conflicts boil down to something simple enough for anyone to understand. This also is the key to understanding the purpose of the disinformation and propaganda with which we all are targeted, disinformation and propaganda that on November 5 swung an American election and put Donald Trump, America’s Putin, back into the White House.

It boils down to this: There are those who believe that democracy and the rule of law are the best way to order societies and to create wealth. And there are those who believe that authoritarianism and corruption are the best way to order societies and to create wealth. The difference is in who gets the wealth and who holds the power — the many, or the few.

The only flaw of this video is that the interviewer is a peacock and a windbag. Sarah Paine’s answers are usually more concise than the rambling, wordy questions. So try to ignore the interviewer as best you can. Sarah Paine, though, won’t waste a second of your time.

Hat tip to Ken, who referenced this video in a recent Substack article.

Midwinter pottage


Click here for high resolution version

If C.J. Sansome was right in his Shardlake novels set in Tudor England (and I think he was), then pretty much everybody (except for Henry VIII) lived on pottage then. What was in the pottage depended of course on what you had. A good variety of garden vegetables would have made a huge difference. If you had some meat or fish, so much the better. If you could eat your pottage with a dark, hearty bread made from rye, oats, or barley, with some ale, then you were truly rich. And probably healthy as well. Butter and cheese? Princely.

Historians say that medieval peasants burned 4,000 calories a day. That would mean that they worked from dawn until dark. They probably were very thin, because that’s a lot of calories for poor people. Henry VIII weighed almost 400 pounds when he died. Thus I think it’s safe to assume that he wasn’t living off of pottage and that he wasn’t working from dawn until dark.

I’m 98 percent vegetarian. This was the first beef stew I’d made in more than two years. The midwinter gloom made me do it.

The beef, though, is almost like a seasoning. You don’t need much beef. It’s the vegetables that make the stew, the heavenly combination of potatoes, carrots, onions, and peas, in a sauce reddened with tomatoes. The key to good beef stew is the brown flavor, umami, which comes from browning the beef, the onions, and the flour (for thickening) before the other ingredients or any water are added.

When I think of beef stew, I automatically think of cherry pie for dessert. There was no cherry pie today, though. That’s something I’d make only for company.

Young men and the right-wing rabbit hole

⬆︎ Two Europeans who are not down the right-wing rabbit hole. Listen with headphones, or with a good sound system.

That people like Donald Trump, or Elon Musk, should be what they are makes a certain kind of sense. They have money and power, and they want more money and power. In their narcissism, they think they totally deserve what they have. They think they deserve our adulation for having it — lords of the universe.

But for young men there is no excuse. If voices like Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan, and Jordan Peterson sound like hope, then something inside is stunted. The options outside the rabbit hole are unlimited. They’re just not as easy.

Sweet potato biscuits

If you can make good biscuits, then you can make good sweet-potato biscuits. Substitute mashed sweet potato for a roughly equal amount of flour. Biscuit dough can easily handle a one-to-two ratio of potato to flour, and probably even one-to-one.

Your biscuits will be very tender.

Many kinds of bread, actually — both quick breads and yeast breads — benefit from some potato. I think of this as German thing, though I have had sweet-potato biscuits in African-American restaurants.

Airtags: Yes!

Apple’s Airtags aren’t very expensive. But probably the best way to justify their cost is their ability to track your luggage when flying. Yesterday’s updates of Apple’s operating systems introduced a new feature — the ability to share Airtag information with airlines, because Airtag owners usually know more about where their luggage is than the airlines do.

The Washington Post recently had a piece on how potentially helpful this is, given that airlines (yikes!) lose, damage, or delay 270,000 pieces of luggage each month.

For my recent trip to Scotland, I used two Airtags, one in my checked suitcase and one in my carry-on. My flight from Raleigh-Durham to Heathrow was delayed by 14 hours. The plane (a packed Boeing 777-200) had already been loaded and was ready to push back from the terminal when the pilot informed the irritable passengers that a mechanical problem was going to take hours to fix and that the plane “isn’t going anywhere tonight.” Everyone had to “deplane.” Most of us spent the night in the terminal, though some passengers made arrangements for other flights. For the luggage, this caused chaos. All the luggage was unloaded from the plane, and we were told to pick up our luggage at one of the carousels and re-check it the following morning if we chose to say on the delayed flight.

As the plane was loaded again, 14 hours late, I could see on my iPhone that my checked suitcase was on the plane, or “near me,” as the FindMy app says. The Airtags were useful again on the my train trip from Raleigh to Greensboro as I was returning home. Usually I would not check any baggage on a train, but I had arrived at the train station early and wanted to be rid of the big suitcase so that I could go out and scout for lunch. I would never have known that my suitcase went to Greensboro on an earlier train if the Airtags hadn’t told me.

Speaking of delayed and canceled flights, I bought trip insurance through American Airlines when I booked the ticket to London. The delayed flight meant that I missed my train from London to Scotland and had to spend the night in London. Using my iPhone, I hastily changed the train ticket and booked a hotel in London. I filed a claim on the travel insurance for reimbursement for the $149 that the London hotel cost. The insurance paid my claim in less than 48 hours!


The Boeing 777-200 being loaded at Heathrow for the flight to Raleigh-Durham

The New Testament in Scots

If you are a native speaker of English, then Scots is a language that you already 65 percent (more or less) understand. Totally aside from my interest in Scotland and Sir Walter Scott, I find that fact, from linguistics, fascinating. At first I conceived of Scots as just a dialect of English. But scholars see it otherwise, and now I’m convinced: Scots is its own language.

There is a second reason why the Scots language warms my heart (other than the fact that it is beautiful to listen to). It’s that speaking Scots has long been stigmatized in Scotland. To feel properly respected outside the places they grew up, people who grew up speaking Scots learn to “code switch” to standard Scottish English. This is very much like what happens with people, like me, who grew up where the Southern Appalachian English dialect is spoken. We learn to code switch to avoid stigmatization of the way we talk. Some of us can learn to mask our Southern Appalachian accents almost completely. Others retain traces that, to a careful ear, give them away. (More on that below.)

During my recent trip to Scotland, I made a pilgrimage to McNaughtan’s Bookshop in Edinburgh. It is a fascinating place, and, I think, the only seller of rare and antique books in Edinburgh. The owner is very knowledgeable and very helpful. I bought two books while I was there. I had them shipped home so that I didn’t have to deal with them as luggage. One of the books is The History of the Book in Scotland, Volume 4, from the Edinburgh University Press. I will write about that book later. The other is a translation of the New Testament into Scots, published in 1983.

To convince you that you already 65 percent understand the Scots language, I’ve included below an image from page 101. It’s Luke, chapter 2, verses 1 – 14, a section of the New Testament familiar to us all — the Christmas story. For comparison, I’ve also included the same verses from New International translation.

I suggest reading the Scots aloud, paying attention to the sound and phonetics. Most of it will be perfectly understandable, though there are some words you won’t recognize (though many are decipherable from context). I will list those words below.


⬆︎ Click here for high-resolution version.

Siccan a thing: Such a thing

Ilkane: Those of that ilk; that family

Haundfastit: Betrothed

Boukin gin: Very pregnant

Brocht: Brought

Barrie: A baby’s flannel coat

Heck: A slatted wood frame or rack

Hirsel: A flock of sheep

Uncolie frichtit: Extremely frightened

Liggin: Lying

Syne in a gliff: Then all of a sudden

Kythed: Appeared

Yird: Earth


⬆︎ Click here for high-resolution version.

The translator of this work was William Laughton Lorimer, a language scholar who taught Greek at St. Andrews University and who died in 1967. The translation was, of course, from the Greek.

Many people in Scotland are working to reverse the stigmatization of Scots. Sadly, Southern Appalachian English remains just as stigmatized.

I mentioned above that some traces of Southern Appalachian are detectable even in professional actors. For example, there is the tendency not to distinguish between “ken” and “kin,” and “pen” and “pin.” The actor Samuel L. Jackson, who grew up in Chattanooga, provides some good examples of this, especially in Star Wars.

The smartest podcast I’ve ever listened to

Jonathan Rauch is one of my oldest friends. I’ve known him for forty years. Ken Ilgunas is one of my newer friends, fourteen years. I’ve listened to them at the dinner table a good many times, but listening to them in a podcast is even better.

Both are writers. They are of different generations, which makes their conversation even more interesting.

Here’s the link: Jonathan Rauch on the 2024 election, 1960’s Star Trek, and the magnetism of sociopaths.

Jonathan’s next book, to be published by the Yale University Press in February 2025, is Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain With Democracy. My own tiny press, Acorn Abbey Books, has brought out new editions of two of Jonathan’s books that were previously out of print, Denial and The Outnation.

North Carolina’s trains


Rolling into Greensboro from Charlotte. Click here for high resolution version.

If I had not during the previous two weeks spent quite a lot of time on trains in the United Kingdom, I would not have noticed that American trains are bigger and wider than the U.K.’s trains. Here in the U.S., I rode trains from Greensboro to Raleigh for flights out of the Raleigh-Durham airport.

I had mistakenly assumed that the trains that shuttle back and forth from Raleigh to Charlotte are Amtrak trains. A conductor set me straight, after I’d asked him if he knew when the passenger car that I was riding in had been built. He didn’t know, but he volunteered some interesting information about North Carolina’s trains. They are in fact operated by Amtrak, but they are owned by the state of North Carolina. A good many years ago, North Carolina bought some older locomotives and passenger cars from Amtrak, restored them, and put them back into service for in-state travel.

My excuse for being unaware of that is that I was living in California when North Carolina’s train project started. Plus, we no longer have any state or local news to speak of. But Wikipedia has the complete story, N.C. by Train.

Some Googling confirmed that trains in the U.S. are larger and wider than trains in the U.K. The American tracks are wider, thus the cars and locomotives can be wider.

The passenger car that I rode in from Raleigh to Greensboro was downright elegant, a classic, like riding in a 1956 Buick. Though I was unable to determine when the car was made, my guess is that it was at least 30, if not 40, years old. New York, here I come again, by train, hopefully early next spring.


Classic elegance — a passenger car restored for the North Carolina train system. Click here for high resolution version.

Cats and Sir Walter Scott


Walter Scott in his study, with a cat

Sir Walter Scott’s home, Abbotsford, is an enchanting place. I was not surprised on my visit to Abbotsford to see that he had cats, including a favorite cat, Hinse, whose portrait is among the many portraits in Abbotsford’s armoury room. I said to Ken that any writer who has cats is going to write about cats. I had no particular memory of cats appearing in any of the eleven Waverley novels I’ve read, so I had to do some research.

What I wanted was for Scott to be as much a cat person as Robert A. Heinlein, whose novel The Door Into Summer starts ands ends with a cat. Scott, it seems, was not as much a cat person as was Heinlein. But Scott’s The Antiquary has several mentions of cats.

If there is a character in Scott’s novels who is most like Scott himself, that would be Jonathan Oldbuck in The Antiquary. Oldbuck has a cat. The cat is not given a name and mostly serves as atmosphere, sitting on a table in Oldbuck’s study the same way Hinse sat on Scott’s writing desk at Abbotsford, and sitting in a chair in Oldbuck’s dining room.

Washington Irving visited Scott at Abbotsford and wrote this about Scott:

While Scott was reading, the sage grimalkin, already mentioned, had taken his seat in a chair beside the fire, and remained with fixed eye and grave demeanor, as if listening to the reader. I observed to Scott that his cat seemed to have a black-letter taste in literature.

“Ah,” said he, “these cats are a very mysterious kind of folk. There is always more passing in their minds than we are aware of. It comes no doubt from their being so familiar with witches and warlocks.”

He went on to tell a little story about a gude man who was returning to his cottage one night, when, in a lonely out-of-the-way place, he met with a funeral procession of cats all in mourning, bearing one of their race to the grave in a coffin covered with a black velvet pall. The worthy man, astonished and half-frightened at so strange a pageant, hastened home and told what he had seen to his wife and children. Scarce had he finished, when a great black cat that sat beside the fire raised himself up, exclaimed “Then I am king of the cats!” and vanished up the chimney. The funeral seen by the gude man, was one of the cat dynasty.

“Our grimalkin here,” added Scott, “sometimes reminds me of the story, by the airs of sovereignty which he assumes; and I am apt to treat him with respect from the idea that he may be a great prince incog., and may some time or other come to the throne.”


⬆︎ Hinse


⬆︎ Oldbuck in his study


⬆︎ Oldbuck at breakfast


⬆︎ Abbotsford


⬆︎ And for the record, here’s a photo of Ken and me in a pub in Edinburgh, after we’d been to a lecture at the Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club.