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[The Paris Review @parisreview]

“The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind.” —Elizabeth Hardwick
https://t.co/DWvx0j7oi4

[Sam Haselby @samhaselby]

Runciman on how the Cambridge science, engineering, and medical school people saw the humanities: "They were polite but unavoidably patronising. We were heritage Cambridge, useful for how the world saw us, but hard to take seriously on our own terms." https://t.co/P1zVZQIvbG

[sam. @suddenxfear]

there was a time when movies were filmed in real locations.

herrenchiemsee palace in luchino visconti’s ludwig (1973)

[Walter Kirn @walterkirn]

The best page of descriptive English prose I've read this year. Maybe ever. DH Lawrence on Bavarian peasants & the Bavarian landscape. This is how human beings appeared to other human beings once, as earthly animal forms in earthly settings, distinct, soulful, all fate & feeling.

[.. @bbiala1]

@AKDay89 It looks like the Castle of the Crystal in The Dark Crystal (1982) BEFORE Jen and Kira heal the crystal and save the world!

[.. @bbiala1]

@guillaume_mbr I LOVE Tissot!

[.. @bbiala1]

Young Lord Desmond weeps in Owen’s arms, Chapter 36 of Trollope’s Castle Richmond.

[.. @bbiala1]

Extraordinary passage in Chapter 34 of Trollope’s Castle Richmond - the young Lord Desmond’s “girlish” affection for Owen Fitzgerald. In fact, he loves and worships him.

[.. @bbiala1]

Th difference between forty and fifty. Truthful reflections on the “the prime of life.” Chapter 35 of Trollope’s Castle Richmond.

[.. @bbiala1]

“do you not find that the pity of the people is hard to bear?” - truthful reflections in Chapter 34 of Trollope’s Castle Richmond.

[.. @bbiala1]

Wonderful little tangent in Chapter 23, Castle Richmond, on the decline of British taste in the reign of the Georges!

[.. @bbiala1]

A slightly longer explanation of the core Trollopian tenet “You cannot touch pitch and not be defiled.” Chapter 18, Castle Richmond.

[.. @bbiala1]

Wise counsel from Trollope in Chapter 9 of Castle Richmond (1860): “It might be that the misfortune under which he groaned was heavy, but let one’s sorrow be what it may, there is always a better and a worse way of meeting it.”

[.. @bbiala1]

@TradVat2 🙌🙌🤩

[Saggezza Eterna @FinalTelegraph]

The Obama presidency was an existential plague driven by immense psychological rot. This Ivy League–polished empty suit believed his teleprompter eloquence and Harvard credentials granted him divine right to fundamentally transform America against the will of its people. That towering vanity blinded him to historical reality. From the Wilsonian progressives who gave us the income tax and federal reserve to the New Deal architects who entrenched dependency, the smooth-talking intellectual elite has always paved the path to national decline.

Today, Obama’s cult followers still gaze upon him with messianic reverence while sneering at God-fearing, hardworking patriots with supreme condescension. He projected an aura of moral superiority, yet every major policy he touched collapsed into long-term ruin. He possessed an absolute deficit of wisdom, replacing empirical results with trendy academic theories designed to erode Western civilization and American sovereignty.

Obamaism is simply codified envy wrapped in silver-tongued rhetoric. His entire agenda mobilized the base passions of racial grievance and class resentment against productive citizens. Because he and his Chicago-machine cronies lacked the merit and discipline to build, they weaponized the power of the state to punish success and redistribute spoils to their political clientele. This greed was cloaked in the fake vocabulary of hope and change.

Look at the devastating economic data. After inheriting a recession, Obama exploded the national debt by nearly $9 trillion, doubled food-stamp rolls, and oversaw the weakest recovery in modern history. His regulatory jihad crushed small businesses while green-energy scams like Solyndra looted taxpayer dollars. This economic vandalism systematically transferred wealth from the middle class to union bosses, coastal elites, and crony capitalists.

While working-class families lost homes and wages stagnated, Obama and his celebrity courtiers wallowed in luxury, jetting between Martha’s Vineyard and multimillion-dollar compounds. They preached wealth redistribution while ensuring their own fortunes—book deals, Netflix contracts, and speaking fees—remained untouched. Their philosophy was a toxic mix of gluttony for federal power and total sloth regarding genuine productivity.

Having abandoned traditional faith, Obama accelerated a new secular religion based on the idolatry of government and identity. He weaponized the IRS against conservatives, spied on journalists, and lectured Americans about clinging to guns and religion. This spiritual vacuum bred misery. His administration’s embrace of radical gender ideology and the war on police coincided with spiking urban crime and the erosion of the nuclear family, a deliberate rebellion against the natural order fueled by moral nihilism and cultural Marxism.

The defining trait of the Obama machine is blatant, unadulterated hypocrisy. This Nobel Peace Prize–winning charlatan preached unity while spending eight years dividing America by race. He demanded open borders and sanctuary cities for working-class communities while his family enjoyed private security and elite protection. His administration’s lax immigration policies and DACA gambit flooded communities with unvetted migrants, straining welfare systems and public services. He railed against carbon while vacationing on carbon-spewing private jets and golf courses. His entire worldview rested on deceit—Benghazi was a video, Fast and Furious was a gun-walking “oops,” the IRS scandal was “fake outrage,” and Obamacare’s promises were outright lies.

[Eduard Habsburg @EduardHabsburg]

VICTORY OR DEATH is a gripping, dramatic, grim and ultimately hopeful French indie film about the uprising, in 1793, in the Catholic Vendee.
Greatness, failures, it all. Beautifully shot.
Watch now at this link:
https://t.co/5WKZk7paVG

[.. @bbiala1]

@3xchair @JohnDemetry @Variety Non-sequitur, but ‘In the Evening’ is one of the great music videos of the 80s! Sheryl Lee Ralph’s real greatness has never been properly acknowledged.

[.. @bbiala1]

Trollope describing Miss Finesse, “a silent, desirable, correct player”—still true today at the card or mahjong table, as opposed to loud, chatty, or querulous players. The Bertrams, chapter 22.

[.. @bbiala1]

“What a thing it is to have a friend!” Trollope on the difficulty of making new close friends after forty. The Bertrams, chapter 21.

[.. @bbiala1]

@NPinkoski @ClaremontInst Wonderful! Have you read Mary McCarthy's The Mask of State (1974)?