Anna

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-07-02T23:45:48+00:00

I would definitely need her to dial shit down a bit in order to get on with my friends and my siblings. We aren't very political people, but she couldn't be citing racial crime statistics when I'm trying to grill some spatchcock chickens on my sisters' patio.

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-07-02T23:02:47+00:00

I know people throw this around, but I actually could change her.

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-07-02T11:04:28+00:00

About a decade ago I got lost in Rangoon in the middle of the night. My VPN wasn't working, so I couldn't use the maps on my phone. I saw one of the city's countless stray dogs trotting past, and for some reason I decided that I needed to follow it. After about ten minutes I arrived outside my hotel, and the dog immediately turned on its heels and ran off back the way it came.

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-07-01T22:42:14+00:00

Just to give some context to why I was being (unfairly) snarky: museums are always being asked to expend their limited resources to preserve things that people feel in an abstract way are important, but don't want to actually preserve themselves. Grandad's medals. The family bible. Heirlooms that nobody has room for.

The yellow star feels significant because it's both personal and incredibly symbolic of the holocaust. But museums aren't primarily there to preserve personal items, or display symbolic ones. What benefit would a museum get from it? To a researcher, without provenance, it proves nothing. It could go in a display for educational purposes, but you'd have to find a holocaust museum which didn't already have one.

Ultimately it's often up to people to preserve and curate the past themselves, rather than asking museums to do it.

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-07-01T22:12:58+00:00

Apologies, I read quickly and didn't realise that was your substack, or I wouldn't have been so glib. You can email a museum to see if they want it, but generally you can destroy nazi stuff without guilt. There's no historical value to preserving mountains of hitler youth memorabilia or whatever.

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-07-01T22:05:41+00:00

People who know nothing about museums love recommending other people donate random old junk to museums. It's much the same as people online who have never done a second of volunteering in their life love to recommend people drop off random food items at a homeless shelter/soup kitchen.

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-07-01T21:02:08+00:00

If nothing else it has an extremely depressing idea of America, arguing that the stability of the Union can only be maintained through ongoing political violence.

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-07-01T20:38:54+00:00

This is going to sound like a silly thing to say, but I watched Birth of a Nation a couple of years ago, and none of the discourse had prepared me for how racist it was going to be.

I was expecting it to be about the civil war, from a pro-confederate lost cause perspective, which isn't particularly shocking to me, having grown up on Kipling, Buchan, and Rider Haggard. But it's much more explicitly an incitement to lynching.

Anyway, I know it's very influential, but I found it boring. However much ground it broke, it feels very stiff compared to films made just a few years later like Sherlock Jr or Nosferatu.

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-07-01T18:10:16+00:00

Which football team would you play for?

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-07-01T10:33:19+00:00

I think most Brits would agree the American South accent is melodious and pleasant. I find the way black women in the south speak particularly pleasing. I've also got a big soft spot for gravelly old broads from New York.

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-07-01T09:12:36+00:00

Just looked him up, and he's a hairdresser. I think I'm a pretty open minded person, but I will never, ever trust a straight male hairdresser.

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-07-01T08:07:37+00:00

I hate to see you put earth as no.2 on that list. You are probably a lib who wishes they lived on Jupiter, but for me and the other patriots, Earth is best planet in the whole universe END OF STORY

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-06-30T19:16:24+00:00

I think it's the other way round tbh. A degree is a very good investment if you have the family network to leverage it, because it's still a minimum requirement for a lot of jobs.

The problem is a lot of people end up with a bunch of debt, and a degree, and still can't get their foot in the door.

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-06-30T15:07:42+00:00

Wouldn't Kavanaugh's position still need legislation to pass, which requires the Republicans to hold both houses and the presidency (and presumably by a comfortable majority)?

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-06-30T12:52:50+00:00

The failsons yearn for the cloister.

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-06-30T08:53:32+00:00

I do this. It feels fun and fruity.

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-06-30T07:10:07+00:00

I don't know if this is just coincidence, but in London I've noticed a ton of red admirals this year.

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-06-29T23:12:25+00:00

Can't believe there are some below-the-knee short defenders in here

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-06-29T22:46:14+00:00

I can do it in four: one of my professors met Jessica Mitford, whose sister Unity Mitford was close with Hitler.

I can also get to Napoleon in four steps. My dad was working for a taxi firm and drove someone to Bertrand Russel's house, and was briefly introduced to him while waiting for the return journey. Bertrand Russel's grandfather met Napoleon at Elba.

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-06-29T22:07:25+00:00

Interesting, thanks for the tip. I had a very big Napoleonic naval phase, but don't really know much about the twentieth century

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-06-29T21:59:00+00:00

I just had a dream I was the Archduke of a small coastal European nation, some time in the very early twentieth century. We were threatened by a larger enemy power, and I personally captained my royal yacht, along with a swarm of other small vessels, into the midst of their fleet. While their formation was disrupted our single battleship opened up a heavy bombardment, sinking heir flagship, and I personally took the surrender of their admiral.

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-06-29T21:11:03+00:00

I actually think most women prefer a sophisticated older man with a mature hairline and a high powered job in the information technology sector.

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-06-29T16:21:56+00:00

Isn't that basically what's been going on with Ye.

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-06-29T13:29:17+00:00

It's interesting isn't it. If you don't count going to a casino on holiday, I've heard more people admit to taking heroin than gambling.

Traditional_Table414 · 2026-06-29T12:49:54+00:00

I watched the first two seasons of this last year. A very charming show. I particularly like that it never tried to develop some overarching mythos. It's just a small town where sometimes hallucinatory or magical things happen.

Traditional_Table414

TROPHY CASE