Where is the military?
A Gaullist government would have had troops on the streets weeks ago.
Saturday, October 17, 2026
First Paragraph
Afterwards, when the world was exploding around him and the lethal blackbirds were massing on the climbing frame in the school playground, he felt annoyed with himself for forgetting the name of the BBC reporter, a woman, who had told him that his old life was over and a new, darker, existence was about to begin. She had called him at home on his private line without explaining how she got the number. "How does it feel," she asked him, "to know that you have just been sentenced to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini?" It was a sunny Tuesday in London but the question shut out the light. This is what he said, without really knowing what he was saying: "It doesn't feel good." This is what he thought: I'm a dead man. He wondered how many days he had left to live and thought the answer was probably a single-digit number. He put down the telephone and ran down the stairs from his workroom at the top of the narrow Islington row house where he lived. The living room windows had wooden shutters and, absurdly, he closed and barred them. Then he locked the front door.
- From Joseph Anton: A Memoir by Salman Rushdie
Friday, October 16, 2026
The Modern Churchman
An interesting excerpt from Decline and Fall, the 1928 novel by Evelyn Waugh:
Besides this, I have had a letter from Mr. Prendergast stating that he too wishes to resign his post. Apparently he has been reading a series of articles by a popular bishop and has discovered that there is a species of person called a 'Modern Churchman' who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief. This seems to be a comfort to him, but it adds greatly to my own inconvenience.
Remember The Yellow Vest Protests?
Regarding the November 2018 "yellow vest" protests in France:
"Supported by a majority of French public opinion, it has brought together people from very different backgrounds: industrial workers, office workers, small business owners, farmers, young people, middle-aged members of the labor force, retired men and women. These ordinary people, mainly from the working class but in any case unprompted by class consciousness, all have the sense of having been demoted to the status of second-class citizens."
- From Twilight of the Elites: Prosperity, The Periphery, and the Future of France by Christophe Guilluy (2019)
Thursday, October 15, 2026
Please Distribute to All Presenters
Nicholas Bate has a key message: Presenting is not PowerPoint.
PowerPoint should be a last, not a first, resort.
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