I remember there was some article I found pretty convincing a long time ago about how they beat berlusconi by treating him like a normal guy with bad policies instead of trying to do the "referendum on personal vice" thing we do with trump, maybe we could have tried that

not even "inspiration" precisely but sitting and looking at something for a long time and having the immensely satisfying feeling of "I understand this well enough that I think I could reproduce the conditions of its production"

you can't find the original anymore but to me this single tweet is perhaps the quintessential text of the 2010s

but there is some kind of dissonance in the aspirational gentility of a grass lawn compared to the goofy mechanical backpack blowers and riding mowers people use to maintain them, like it's so embarrassing to be caring for plant life you have to make it look like a military campaign