A Man Called Ove




Laughs, tears, and a smart blow against the Swedish Nanny State. Showing on Amazon Prime. Peas in a pod.

Compare with this Swedish TV Masterpiece from InstaPunk Rules.


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Questions about ‘The Paper Symphony’

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I’ve been at sixes and sevens about this post since I knew I had to do it. Even had a hard time picking the leadoff graphic. This one does convey the idea of questioning the decision by a great man of senior years. But this one introduces the notion that Philip Glass’s principled stand is one that has been sponsored by indolent dilettantes who didn’t give a fig about the Kennedy Center during the decades in which it has been literally falling down. Falling down. Along with all the forms of high art the Kennedy’s were trying to inspire with a facility for culturally significant performances by the nation’s most gifted artists. Interesting and ironic that they choose the 87 years Philip Glass to deliver their most stinging blow against the unspeakable privately financed renovation of the crumbling building and its wayward preoccupation with niche artistes. Am I getting ahead of myself here? Did you miss the story when it broke? Lawrence O’Donnell, the left’s fantasy Dean of Jeffersonian ...
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May Madness, Part Last

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How did we get here from here ? Don’t forget the question. We’ll be answering it by the end of the post, in our usual roundabout way. Today is the last day of May, finally, and therefore the Last Day of May Madness. I don’t pretend to know what June will bring and what epithet it will earn, but this second part of yesterday’s ramble is about showing you that madness takes different people differently, and mine is not so much random infantilism as obsessive curiosity derived from my relationship with the universe. The universe speaks to me in ways both overt and intimational, which is my own word and also the tacit permission I give you to interpret my references to the universe as free-association play with my particular universe, of which I have documented abundant bits and pieces and bigger parts too. I wouldn’t do that if I didn’t think there was some value to it. Yesterday we started with RINOs in the news and the funny curse they seem to have brought upon themselves, and we ended...
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The Graying of a Boy

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The Mark Hamill thing. A matter of puzzlement to many people. I have an idea about what’s going on with him, which I’ll explain because I’m thinking most people are just chalking it up to projected career disappointments. Which is part of it but not all of it. I know that the language issues surrounding the topics I’ll be touching on are prohibitive, since words no longer mean what they used to, but I’m just laying it out here and everyone is free to take it or leave it as they choose. There’s an easy answer and a deeper answer. The easy answer is just scratching the surface but should show the value of common sense in a long-distance analysis like this. Easy? For Hamill, Trump is a stand-in for Harrison Ford. Looked them up. Ford is 6’1”. Hamill’s bio claims 5’9” or 5’10” though  the claim is challenged by those who say he’s more like 5’7” give or take. It’s not political, the Trump hatred. Not really. The TDS mania that pervades Hollywood was an attractive nuisance just waiting f...
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Silly Saturdays — Of Curses and Cagliostro

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They don’t let me out much anymore. I feel like Uncle Fred . Back on the first of April I rechristened the next 30 days April Fools Month. Turns out I was right to do that, as the Democrat downward spiral into an unhinged opposite of what it once prided itself for became more laughable by the day. Now we are on the 30th day of what I am hopefully about to bury as “May Madness,” a cringe-inducing period of violent Dem fantasies and true-life violence they deplore without seeming able to connect their own rhetoric with mass shootings and assassination attempts. They’re actually proud of themselves. A lot like their Republican counterpart, the RINOs, whose only sign of backbone in many years has been their willingness to defy Trump and conspire openly against the legislative priorities he was elected to implement. And, like the Dems, they're proud of themselves. It’s not a small group. Let me count the stiff-necked feeders at the Wall St/Pharma/Amnesty/Pork/Antisemite trough who have ...
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An Unscheduled Interrupt on AI

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  RAV’s Frank Gaffney discussing existential crisis of AI  with statecraft guru Sam Faddish. What could go wrong? This, for one thing: He has his own gaggle of Chicken Little AI experts. And, inevitably, this: Me, when I’m not hiding my true self behind a photograph They’re all worried about AI. Terrified in fact. For different reasons. Bannon has some apocalyptic seer who’s worried about meta-humans replacing Homo sapiens. Gaffney and Faddis are fixated on the latest AI hot topic, “The Singularity,” that magic moment when a supercomputer becomes self aware and decides to exterminate mankind. How did we get here? The usual way. The movies. First, there was HAL: Then, just a quarter century later, after a decades-long detour through a dead-end time paradox called The Terminator , there came the monstrous harpy HAL, a transgendered terminator in a box, like we’d been brought up to believe in, including Gaffney and Faddis: Worried yet? Here’s her resumé and mission statement. C...
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Lady Gaga-cum-Barbie-cum-AI/T&A/Autotune-cum-softporn-cum-girlieboys…

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 …and a weird dose of nostalgia, as for something half remembered. What did you do for your Memorial Day remembrances?  We watched the laying off the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns and the President’s speech. The audience was large, and the people there looked amazingly normal. Attentive and respectful. The way our parents taught us to be at solemn events. We heard the fireworks begin after dark and out the Thundershirt on our terrier Tommy, who isn’t entirely sure that fireworks aren’t an approaching thunderstorm. All we needed of that timeless ritual, since we’ve both been to May such occasions, including the field a mile away where the Salem even is always held. It was only at bedtime that I tried something new. In my constant search for background sounds that facilitate the hours of sleep I get before the inevitable wee hours summons to the keyboard, I try different things, usually intended to be monotonous and therefore soporific. British crime documentary series are ...
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Freaky Friday 3 — The Most Unkindest Cut of All…

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Stupid stupid stupid girl…   She doesn’t know anything but what’s on the teleprompter. We were talking about history in a previous post today. Here’s an irony so total that the ones who built this moral trap for themselves probably still won’t understand it. Today’s definition of being Progressive, I mean truly Progressive not with exceptions, are fully in favor of gender affirmation surgeries as early as late prepubescence. They are so certain of the righteousness of their position in the absolute sanctity of individual choice regarding gender decisions that they argue their opponents’ position is un-Christian.  Where history has them by the short and curlies, so to speak. In actual as opposed to made-up history the decision to remove reproductive organs at prepubescence was born not of woke social engineering but of a Christian religious ideal in the 16th Century. Singers called Castrati were created surgically and became famous performers for Christian audiences. Yes, the ...
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Seventh Heaven for Hamilton

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  Lewis Hamilton wins Seventh World Championship at Formula 1 Grand Prix in Turkey: A stunning drive from Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton in the Turkish Grand Prix gave him his 10th victory of the season – and, more crucially, saw him claim the seventh drivers’ title of his career, to equal the record of Michael Schumacher, as Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel completed the podium after a thrilling race in Istanbul. Hamilton had started the race in sixth, risen to third midway through the first lap and then dropped back to sixth by the end of Lap 1 after an error at Turn 9. But a decision to change his intermediate tyres just once saw Hamilton drive a masterful race to claim victory by over 25 seconds from Perez. The win alone was enough to claim championship #7, but it was even more assured after a disastrous race for Valtteri Bottas - the only man who could have stopped Hamilton winning the title today - who spun six times en route to a P14 finish.
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An Exhibit for a Post Still in Progress

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The post referenced in the title is about an IPR National Insurrection analysis that is presently underway. Putting it together is a real slog, and I don’t like slogs, which is why I’m putting pressure on myself by publishing this in advance. It’s really just data, but it’s data that show you just how deceptive the presentation and supposed analysis of data can be. Part of the Insurrection post is examining differentials between various troubled regions of the United States. For many kinds of behavioral variables, there are nicely produced maps compiled by this and that federal or public interest organization. Examples I’ve collected so far in researching my post. [Note: Per 100,000 numbers are less messy for the social scientists to soil their hands with than collectively shocking totals.] Of course, it’s very difficult to amass data that won’t be disputed about deaths per 100,000 sexually active females of fertile age. None of the data collectors really like using total deaths as a s...
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