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When it comes to organization, I am either Marie Kondo or Hurricane Katrina. My shirts—at least the ones I have put in their proper place—are all folded into perfect 10-inch X 10-inch squares. Sometimes, there may be a mix of socks, towels, and hand tools stuffed into the drawer with them. Other times, every piece of clothing is stored away with the same exacting neatness, waiting for the next time I can’t find something important, like a protractor or the pencil I sharpened yesterday, and I dump everything on the floor in a desperate search for that thing.
My wife’s organizational modes are either Martha Stewart (with a hillbilly twist) or whoever it is that periodically rearranges the grocery store to thwart efficient shoppers. She has said many times that she hates moving, but she loves rearranging. Want to make a peanut butter sandwich? The peanut butter might still be in the maroon cabinet, or it might be in the narrow white cabinet, or it could be in the garage. Also, the cabinet that once held plates and bowls now houses snacks and measuring cups. Good luck finding the oatmeal.
When this becomes irritating, I passive-aggressively give my Substack newsletter a title that I know she will find far too esoteric, and when she tries to talk me into changing it, I will steer the conversation toward how cool it would have been to be there when Joan Didion was interviewing Joan Baez for her essay, “Where the Kissing Never Stops.” And also, who doesn’t love William Butler Yeats, from whom Didion borrowed her title, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and isn’t “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity” (from the same poem [ [link removed] ]) an apt description for today’s politics?
Yesterday was one of those days when my wife’s grocery-store-rearranging mode caused me some irritation. You see, because my email inbox often has something around the 5,796 unread emails that are in it today, she thought it would be best if she kept the email associated with my newsletter neat and orderly. She organized everything with labels, and she even made a “Trygve Read” folder and demanded that I never let it fill up with more than ten (or maybe it was a hundred) unread emails. I have been mostly above average at achieving that goal.
This writing enterprise has grown enough that yesterday I needed to send login information to a new team member. Just to double-check my password, I logged out and then attempted to log back in, and thus it began. I typed in the email address and then clicked the button that would send a confirmation code to that address. The email never arrived, so I used what I was certain was the correct password. No joy. I repeated the cycle until Substack decided I must be either a North Korean hacker or a kindergartner with below-average tech skills.
The confirmation emails, it turned out, were delivered to the correct email address, but not to the inbox or the promotions or social media folders or even to the spam folder. No, they were shunted directly to the trash folder. It was an unintended consequence of my wife’s Martha Stewart clean-inbox program. Some label or setting had created a burly virtual bouncer who kicked Substack emails to the curb. In other words, it was totally and completely my wife’s fault. Never mind that I could have added the new team member without logging off. That is irrelevant. No, I don’t take responsibility at all.
If you are looking for a more organized writer who always says brilliant things, has a Nobel Prize, and isn’t on the Epstein client list, you might want to check out the latest [ [link removed] ] from economist Paul Krugman. He recently titled on of his pieces “Muskenfreude [ [link removed] ],” which makes me believe he deserves a second Nobel Prize. His latest is about the MAGA war on science.
Krugman’s main argument is that cuts to research aren’t so much about shrinking government as they are about suppressing research that counters MAGA narratives.
The Trump administration wants to cut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations (NOAA) budget by 40% because any type of weather research could produce results that don’t match the claims of climate change deniers.
NIH research could continue proving that vaccines are safe and effective.
In the long run, research cuts will cost the United States far more than the budget cuts save.
Krugman cites [ [link removed] ] a study by economists David Cutler and Ed Glaeser that shows NIH cuts alone “. . . might save $500 billion in federal spending over the next 25 years — while imposing more than $8 trillion in losses.”
Krugman ends his piece with a video of Lena Horne singing “Stormy Weather,” an idea I intend to steal, with a different song / artist, at the end of this piece.
In a related story, the Daily Wire, which I do not recommend to anyone, played a Kristi Noem audio clip about Alligator Auschwitz that would turn the stomachs of most decent people. They were also pleased to report this morning that Attorney General Pam Bondi has dropped all charges against Utah plastic surgeon Michael Kirk Moore, who discarded $28,000 worth of COVID vaccines the way my wife eighty-sixes emails from Substack. Moore also gave children saline shots instead of COVID vaccinations and sold fake vaccination cards.
War on science, indeed.
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