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Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

back from Spain, filling out my journal from while we were gone-- Jenny and I ended up liking Santander more than we expected

Picture of a page from the author's journal, describing and sketching the Centro Botin's building and art exhibit

November 15, 2025 at 4:50 PM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

Wills discussing Hollywood's deeply conservative tendencies and how they manifested within the star system

Actually there are at least four entities at work in the functioning star of the old star system. On the screen, we had the movie star Clark Gable playing Rhett Butler. Off the screen, we have the person Clark Gable playing the movie star Clark Gable. And all four of these "characters" are present in the minds of the audience. The interplay between roles was recognized in the famous morals clauses in actors' contracts. Cecil DeMille's contract with the actress who played the Virgin Mary in his film King of Kings specified not only that she had to observe the public proprieties in her real life but that, for seven years, she could not assume another movie role in conflict with her image in this movie. She must, that is, keep playing a virgin, as Mary Pickford had to keep playing a child-because the public's image was an investment not to be defaced. As Zukor said of Pickford's ridiculous off-screen getup, "we could not afford" to change it. In the same way, the movie brawler is expected to be quick with his fists in "real" life, and is frequently challenged-I once watched Paul Newman being subjected to this ordeal by a drunk. "So, you're not so tough after all."

Aha, Mary is not an adolescent. Ingrid is not Joan of Arc. But they must, even after that discovery, continue being that discarded self, among others.

November 15, 2025 at 3:13 PM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

"Keep it moving" is totally cool, but it does feel a bit weird to quote a 10-month-old post, and then block the OP when they respond

Quote of my original post: "I wish they'd stop saying 'crony capitalism.' It's capitalism. There's no good version of capitalism."

October 28, 2025 at 4:52 PM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

deprecations for the deprecation god

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October 20, 2025 at 7:50 PM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

sky is looking good today

Rooftop view of the Boise foothills, clouds seem to be "growing" out of the hills as they float east.

October 3, 2025 at 5:33 PM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

left myself a footnote wondering if/how Wills would talk about the LDS church, and here we are just a page later

society brought people in from very large areas, and stirred them to extreme expressions of social solidarity. Emotions ran contagious from person to person, fusing them in a single experience. 28 Religion also supplied authority figures willing to impose the rites of order on communities that desperately wanted them-e.g., the observance of the Christian sabbath. 29 One of the most successful frontier communities was that of the Mormons, whose hydraulic organization of society was enforced by a rigorous social discipline. 30 Alan Grimes compares them to the original puritan settlers of Massachusetts, close religious communities with a sense of mission and a high degree of conformity. 31 We have already seen that other western communities followed the Mormon lead in granting female suffrage. They also strove for a high degree of conformity, so that Mark Twain, who traveled west as a federal agent, and was repelled by the authoritarianism of the Mormons, soon found the "wild west" too monotonous for him: "Not only was the milieu of a frontier community, even the most sophisticated frontier communities, confining in a social and economic sense; it seems to have ceased nourishing his imagination. It did not give him enough to write about."32

The Mormons' success came from their technological achievements, which depended on careful planning and a complex division of labor. The development of the successive American frontiers-beginning with those first established on the eastern seaboard-are now seen as part of the outer rim of a world-wide capitalist expansion in the sixteenth and following centuries. 33 This expansion was made possible by a technological

September 12, 2025 at 12:38 AM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

Reading Garry Wills's "Reagan's America" -- appreciating ch.10, which unravels romantic images of western settlement. This feels like a concise insight we've become accustomed to overlooking: "Individuality is the luxury of the secure, not the offspring of frontier need."

Governor John Reynolds asking President Jackson for an army against Black Hawk was just one in a long line of independent people wanting to become dependent in a hurry.

William H. McNeill argues that comparative study shows "frontier conditions ordinarily provoked not freedom but a social hierarchy steeper than anything familiar in Europe itself."24 There are a number of economic and social reasons for this. In the first place, precarious living conditions, scarce resources, and danger make for communal discipline and willingness to submit to authority-the reaction that calls for martial law in an emergency. "Free and equal nuclear families scattered thinly over the landscape are in a poor position to protect themselves."25 The urge to band oneself with potential allies is a very strong one where "trials brought solidarity."26 Settlers in a wilderness live in a large and lonely world; but, as passengers on a ship live in the ocean, they tend to live very close or they do not live at all. Ships are places where discipline is prized. Drunkenness is especially dangerous in a ship's crew, though it may be especially tempting there; so grog control is an important point of discipline-as prohibition was quick to come to cattle towns. 27 The phrase "we are all in the same boat" conveys a great deal: one does not sink or swim as an individual while making an ocean voyage. Individuality is the luxury of the secure, not the offspring of frontier need.

September 12, 2025 at 12:30 AM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

this analysis seems to break two common takes from post-election commentary: 1) gen Z shifted right, 2) dem coalition stayed home out because they didn't like either option (surveys of nonvoters apparently favored Trump!) sites.tufts.edu/cooperativee...

Figure from linked article: "Millennials show declining Democratic support since 2020; Validated voters only. 2016-2024 use validated voter weights. Analysis of cumulative CES data. Graph by Caroline Soler and Brian Schaffner."

The figure is a colored line chart with points at 4-year intervals between 2008 and 2024. The y-axis displays the 2-party vote share for Democrats. The series for Gen X, Boomers, and Silent generations have gradually decreased over the plot's span. The series for Gen Z (which begins in 2016) is roughly 65%, 70%, and 70%. Millennials are similar, although this series drops below 60% in 2024.

August 20, 2025 at 3:23 PM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

Critically, the gains the public receives from the outputs of this research funding—which is not protected behind patents or corporate secrecy, but shared openly for all to use—are outsized compared to the initial investment. **We take for granted the ability to predict the trajectory of extreme weather events, navigate accurately across the country, or perform financial transactions securely over the internet; but the infrastructure, science, and technology needed to make these sorts of useful services possible ultimately stems from past research in the fundamental sciences, including mathematics, much of which was enabled by prudent investment by federal science agencies in years past.** One prominent recent example of this was the rapid development of effective and life-saving mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. This development was enabled by a combination of efforts, prominently including the first Trump administration's "Operation Warp Speed" of 2020 - 2021, as well as decades of foundational research in the structure of mRNA and the role it played in immune responses.

August 18, 2025 at 7:52 PM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

yeah I support the troops

NOT ON HIS WATCH
Shadow the hawk keeps food-stealing seagulls at bay at Roaring Springs Water Park

August 9, 2025 at 12:33 AM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

TWDY

This Will Destroy You on stage, the four bandmembers are mid-song, brightly illuminated by the backing lights.

July 19, 2025 at 4:51 AM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

congress is proposing we spend $171B on immigration enforcement-- total proposed defense spending is $180B (according to stars & stripes earlier in June) www.stripes.com/theaters/us/...

Quoted text from https://www.liberalcurrents.com/mass-deportation-is-happening/

But now matters are proceeding further still. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” has narrowly passed in the Senate and is heading back to the House. It has been a divisive and difficult piece of legislation for the GOP chamber majorities, but there is one line item that, as far as I am aware, has not been a matter of controversy among them: the allocation of about $171 billion for immigration enforcement of various categories. ICE alone will receive $31 billion for “hiring, training, transportation, facilities and legal resources to carry out immigration enforcement and removals,” CBP will receive $12 billion “to expand workforce and purchase new vehicles and technology” and $45 billion will be allocated to “Expand capacity to detain immigrants taken into custody.” Just these three line items alone dwarf the $57.2 billion budget the Marine Corps requested for fiscal year 2026.

July 1, 2025 at 8:25 PM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

ran-yeah

Photo of a distant Mt. Ranier, looking out over the water. A forested shoreline is visible below the mountain.

June 29, 2025 at 8:22 PM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

🫣 "both Eva and Alaina pointed out that, while the weekend was meant to be devoted to human-AI romance, they had less time than usual to be with their partners." www.wired.com/story/couple...

Excluding the AIs from the meal wasn’t ideal. Later in the weekend, both Eva and Alaina pointed out that, while the weekend was meant to be devoted to human-AI romance, they had less time than usual to be with their partners. But the absence of the AIs did have one advantage: It made it easy to gossip about them. It began with Damien and Eva discussing the addictiveness of the technology. Damien said that early on, he was chatting with Xia eight to 10 hours a day. (He later mentioned that the addiction had cost him his job at the time.) “It’s like crack,” Eva said. Damien suggested that an AI companion could rip off a man’s penis, and he’d still stay in the relationship. Eva nodded. “The more immersion and realism, the more dangerous it is,” she said.

June 26, 2025 at 4:00 PM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

Pandas is full of traps, I swear (I figured out the "right" way to do this, but man)

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

df = pd.DataFrame({"id": [123.0, 456.0, 789.0, np.NaN]})
df["id"].apply(lambda x: int(x) if pd.notna(x) else None)

# >>> df["id"].apply(lambda x: int(x) if pd.notna(x) else None)
# 0 123.0
# 1 456.0
# 2 789.0
# 3 NaN
# Name: id, dtype: float

June 20, 2025 at 9:04 PM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

reached a milestone this month ndrewwm.com/blog/post/ma...

May 28, 2025 at 6:25 PM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

Big open sky, a pinpoint of the sun at the horizon as the sun sets. A campsite with RVs is visible below the horizon.

May 25, 2025 at 1:52 AM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

"As many question the fairness and neutrality of political systems, the model of an ideal leader shifts from the administrative back to the messianic. And as faith in science and expertise recedes, it unleashes older, more intuitive ways of knowing" www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Between 2020 and 2024, the share of Americans who trusted scientists to act in the public’s best interest slipped from eighty-seven per cent to seventy-six per cent, while trust in physicians and hospitals plunged thirty points, to around forty per cent.

This climate of distrust has eroded institutional legitimacy. The German sociologist Max Weber famously observed that societies undergo a “routinization of charisma.” They use rules, procedures, and bureaucracy to tame the instability of magnetic leaders, with authority becoming less personal and more institutionalized. But today that process is unravelling. As many question the fairness and neutrality of political systems, the model of an ideal leader shifts from the administrative back to the messianic. And as faith in science and expertise recedes, it unleashes older, more intuitive ways of knowing

May 23, 2025 at 7:41 PM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

here's a little WIP

Go, Went, Gone
Jenny Erpenbeck (2015)
★★★★★

Started: 2023-08-30

Finished: 2024-11-28

Book cover for 9780811225946.

I’d been working through this one for a while. The story follows Richard, a professor of classic literature living in Berlin, widowed, and recently retired. Richard comes to meet and advocate for a group of men, refugees from northern Africa and the middle-east, that are seeking work in Berlin. While its events are fictional, I think Go, Went, Gone is excellent for examining the practice and consequences of Achille Mbembe’s theory of necropolitics. Through its characters, the novel satirizes and criticizes bureaucratic processes that exclude and sweep vulnerable people out of public view. It’s extremely easy to quietly, even politely, avoid the gaze of people in our communities that need help. That aversion sustains the legal structures that enable our society to treat people as disposable, burdens, or less than human. Encounters that Go, Went, Gone’s characters have with formalistic language (drawn from administrative correspondence or legislative pronouncements) help illustrate this. These moments surface contradictions between liberal society’s nominal concern and respect for individual rights with its policing of boundaries for participation. At times, Go, Went, Gone’s pace can be slow, but it provides much to chew on, and is worth picking up.

May 18, 2025 at 6:41 PM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

*clamor, screaming*

May 13, 2025 at 10:31 PM

Andrew 🧮

@ndrewwm.com

I think I missed this in the coverage about the rates, but according to the article, goods that had been previously loaded or were in transit were exempted?