Lil buddy is lowkey ferocious w it

All but says that he was prob into her bc she looked like his dead wife. But draws upon a book written in the 90s to say the consensus opinion is there was mutual affection. Haven’t read enough to confirm, but Boles really leans into the Benevolent Slave Owner thing

The religious conversation is incredibly interesting tho. TJ apparently logicked himself into saying “God is real but Jesus was just a dude but the coolest most moral dude to ever exist who had illiterate buddies that got carried away.”

“Biographer likes his subject” too much syndrome shows up in particular w the slavery issue. Broadly says “he still owned people but by the standards of his time and place and society he was pretty nice to them!” But doesn’t fully go into the contradictory nature of it all imo

You probably square the circle by talking about slavery primarily as an economic force in America, but then you run the risk of not emphasizing how awful it was to your readers while subjecting them to economic history. It’s rough!

I will say though it is extremely tricky to try and write a good political history/biography on the Early Republic while also going into any level of depth on the social history of slavery. They’re so disconnected and the latter so depressing, it feels so hard to do both at once

Ik how the data is collected, I was in charge of the combine tracking data while at NGS.

His speeds are a hair slower, but not to the level of an error w the lasers. It’s way more likely that he just got lucky by running particularly straight, had his arm swing to set off the end laser quick, etc

So many odd dudes who were otherwise totally unremarkable until they wrote a couple things people loved and then they found themselves incredibly important and powerful

If he runs a 40 hitting that top speed 100 times does he run a 4.29 every time? No. They would prob be in the range of like 4.42-4.29 with only hitting 4.29 like 10 times. Idk if that means he’s a “true” 4.29 or whatever, but it doesn’t raise to the level of suspicion that the lasers messed up imo

But confused by what you ab the tracking speeds? His max speed is in range with other speeds for guys who ran low-mid 4.3s (+/- 0.3 mph) and shaving off 0.05ish seconds w form passes a sniff test. It’s prob the best time he could’ve gotten, but doesn’t seem to rise to the level of laser time error?

Doesn’t sound like there is anything of substance in it tbh. Only thing I’m seeing is that one page of one paper says “Israeli intelligence” and so some people are losing their minds. Not compelling

Can’t start thinking Bob Packwood is the only one acting inappropriately towards women in Congress!

“Well our president seems to be a serial sexual predator who cannot control himself. Guess we’ll focus on the one consensual affair he had and his shady conman political associate that every American politician ever has had.”

michael hoechtua imo