September 5, 2025

Friday links, China edition

September 4, 2025

🍿 Thursday Murder Club (2025) felt oddly flat for a British murder mystery with an A-level cast. I can think of two reasons why: Chris Columbus’s sense of pacing doesn’t sit well with me — “Home Alone” was the last time he hit his target — and Thomas Newman’s scores tend to be lethargic. Too bad.

Notes on Montenegro

Our two-week visit to the beaches of Montenegro was, overall, a bust.

The fault was mine. I tried to recreate the one perfect day we had there last year, on a secluded beach accessible only by boat and with crystal-clear water perfect for snorkeling but with amenities like a small cafe, working restrooms and lounge chairs. To do that, we booked a place that was minutes away from the dock closest to that beach in Rating for Čanj: thumbs down, one star, would not go again. Čanj, a small and fairly undeveloped town.

The idea was to take the 10-minute boat ride there each day and do nothing but swim, with some rest and book reading in between laps. The reality was that:

And then, 6 days into our 14-day stay, there was a fire. This sent one half of our group back home to Serbia earlier than planned, and my own clan to Rating for Ulcinj: thumbs up, five stars, will go again. Ulcinj, which was the furthest away we could have imagined to go and get away from the smoke. We spent 3 days there, and those were in fact the highlight of the trip because Ulcinj and our last-minute apartment booking were both breathtakingly beautiful. Sadly, the small town beach was a sandy muddy mess, and the larger, 12-kilometer long strip of sand was both too far away and reminded us too much of what we could get in our backyard, so we had to find an alternative for the remainder of our stay.

So we ended up at a resort. Not just any resort, but the first ever Rating for the Montenegro Radisson: thumb horizontal, 3 stars, would only come in the off-season so unlikely it would ever happen again. Radisson in Montenegro, or rather a 10-ish or so-year-old complex of beautiful stone-encrusted seaside property that got its Radisson license this year. Not exactly the beach — it sat on a piece of rock so the main way to get into the water were ladders — but it was again crystal-clear, only slightly warmer, and with a greater variety of sea life than the one we first had in mind.

The first day was a fairy-tale ending to our trip-to-date. Sadly, we had 5 more days that all but destroyed our initial impression:

Topping everything off, our return car trip reminded us that Montenegro sorely lacks infrastructure to accommodate the number of people it receives during the summer, which is not helped by summer-time road closures for repairs. This is unfortunate, because Montenegro is a microcosmos of every possible beach you can find, from Thai island-like seclusion to Greek island wilderness to the Wildwood-level expanses of sand, all in a sub-300km stretch of coastline. If and when we ever come back, it will be on a boat.

September 3, 2025

Mid-week links (warning: two of them are to X posts… Xosts?)

As the deployment of digital technologies continues to generate ever-more stratospheric concentrations of wealth, the masses sink deeper into the void left by the evisceration of social solidarity and the rise of automation. The often-missed point about sovereign individuals is that not everyone gets to be one. But everyone should aspire to be one, and in the meantime follow one, as they walk down the road to selfdom.

Worth reading for that last sentence alone.

September 2, 2025

There is much to learn from Alan Jacobs’s brief post about the pleasures of reading, if you don’t take it too seriously. Who apologizes for re-reading? Where is the line between keeping count of books read and surveying what you have read in a year? And of course, if after a long day at the office and sharing some evening time with the family the only way to get to a book is to crack it open at 10pm while lying in bed and at least try to read, who is Jacobs (and who am I) to judge? We can’t all be humanities professors.

September 1, 2025

Labor day links, and there are many of them

Happy grilling!

August 31, 2025

🎾 They found him, and they boy ended up getting more than just a hat. Love a happy ending.

August 30, 2025

A beautiful day in DC, which I have spent running just to stay in place:

All the while evading my progeny’s attempts to rope me into a game of Foresaken, which is apparently what children do these days instead of running around in back alleys and playing hopscotch.

Dictator Central

After being away for almost two months, this is my impression of our little corner of DC: fewer people, more police cars, scattered groups of youngsters in camouflage uniforms looking like they’re just happy to be here although not really sure what they were supposed to do, the usual smattering of disheveled people sleeping on the ground and/or park benches, but with fewer belongings packed around them, all of us under the watchful eyes of Dear Leader.

The last 8 or so months have been a series of catastrophes small and large, most of which with delayed effect so that the true consequences won’t be recognized until years from now — if at al, seeing how the crack American news media have TikTok attention spans. Just look at research: grants not being paid out, many more not even being submitted because what’s the use, then people deciding to leave the country, others being kicked out, even more choosing to do their studies elsewhere. None of it will have consequences tomorrow, next year, or even what remains of this decade, but consequences it will have and they will not be positive.

But this is just high-level catastrophizing. The situation on the ground resembles ever more an Armando Iannucci satire that reveals everyone to be an idiot even the so-called serious people in the room. Of course as Kohen brothers have taught us, the stupidest people are also the most vicious.

What I would love to know is whether any American who supports the turn their country has taken for any idealistic reason and not for personal enrichment or opportunism? If this describes you please email me or leave a comment below. This immigrant needs an explanation for why copying petty dictators and making Little Pyongyang out of DC is good for anyone whose office is not in Kremlin.

August 29, 2025

🎾 Ladies and gentlemen, behold the US Open’s Jackass of the week. I hope that sweaty unautographed hat stinks up everything in the bag.