Matthew Budman, book guy

@matthewbudman.bsky.social

1826 Followers 660 Following

News junkie, editor, faculty spouse, author of “Book Collecting Now.”

Speaking of Jazz The strangest of all arguments in favor of jazz is that of its widespread popularity. Was not the belief in witches widespread and popular? Was not the belief in dried spiders as a cure for headache popular? Was not the belief in the flatness of the earth widespread and popular? Have not all human fashions been widespread and popular? Fashion implies change. Human experience is that man goes to music for rest, for solace, for quiet. But jazz is excitement, and no man, except a madman, is or wants to be permanently excited. The radio program makers are satisfied that real music is what the people want, so real music is being broadcast. The very mushroom growth of jazz is enough to predict its ephemerality.
The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore Lepore has had an eventful year. In addition to day jobs as Harvard professor and New Yorker staff writer, she has published an authoritative history of the U.S. Constitution, won a Pulitzer Prize for the book, and embraced a role as one of media's go-to guests to make sense of America's 250th birthday. Now, the public intellectual is back with a work of history and criticism in the tradition of Hannah Arendt, tracing the origins, development and disastrous future of what she calls the Artificial State: the increasingly swift abandonment of democracy and other human-centric institutions "for rule by automation, government by machine, and replacement by artificial intelligence."
Photo of a crushingly ordinary downtown intersection: a couple of cars driving past, an empty bike lane, the Orpheum theater across the street. Not one brick "scarred with jailhouse tattoos"; no one "behaving like dogs."
Three Dinesh D'Souza tweets about how Trump pronouncing Thailand "Thighland" is actually correct
Covers of the fourteen books I've read of the Times' "50 Best Thrillers of the 21st Century" list
"How Hard Was Today's Connections?" SOLVE RATE 52% Number of mistakes today: None, 13% of players: YOU
The character Pickles Aplenty from BOJACK HORSEMAN https://bojackhorseman.fandom.com/wiki/Pickles_Aplenty
Mr. Trump said that talks with Iran would begin on Monday, and that he was told there could be a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial shipping route, as well as “a deal on the nuclear.” He has, of course, said most of this before. Repeatedly.
The classic yard sign beginning: "We believe the legal thriller MICHAEL CLAYTON…is a vastly underrated cinematic masterpiece…" https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/thlao0/yard_sign_in_dallas_letting_everyone_know_they/
The London W1 corner of Goodge Street and Charlotte Street, with signs for both overlooking the sidewalk
The cover of Gene Kranz's book FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION
screenshot from the video, with three sheriffs in nearly identical suits, shirts, ties, hats, and faces
First edition of "James and the Giant Peach": cover, title page, inside illustration
AQI 239 (!!)
New York Daily News cover 6/17/2018, with the headline OPEN TREASON and an illustration of Trump holding hands with Putin and shooting Uncle Sam in the head
current New York air quality: 192
screenshot detail: PURGERY ACCUSATION
First edition of Benjamin Spock's "The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care"
Fox News headline, with typo: "Former President Ronald Regan gave away his son's college football scholarship"
from GEN V, a poster of "The Guardians of Godolkin"—two superpowered teenagers in front of space, explosions, statues https://the-boys.fandom.com/wiki/Guardians_of_Godolkin
Screenshot of Trump's May 26, 2026 physical, claiming he is 75 inches. From https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trumps-doctors-sneak-weight-reveal-into-shady-medical-report/
still a blank space under "Tributes Pour In for Graham"
21 min: Both teams almost grind to a halt. The heat beginning to kick in.
Trump tweet 7/9/17: "Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded.."
Everbach said the state’s growing involvement in higher ed led her to accept a buyout from UNT when they offered her one in the spring. She’s employed by the university until Aug. 31, making this her last time attending and presenting at the conference as a UNT faculty member. She still intends to go, but will pay for it herself, she said.
screenshots from four (4) articles featuring quotes from USM professor Ron Schmidt
A group of random people in PLURIBUS, all part of the hive mind, staring at Carol
screenshot of Shutterfly email subject line: “Relive 4th of July 2026 for years to come”
This is why the passive voice matters. If freedom was given, the story can be told as national benevolence and can end in self-congratulation. If freedom was seized, then the men who seized it held a claim on the nation, and the nation’s subsequent betrayal of that claim through the overthrow of Reconstruction and the long decades of Jim Crow becomes part of the story too.
In reference to Trump's ability to shrug off controversies in a life which has been 'mired in scandal', he says that the President may nonetheless 'emerge from the flames, battered but intact, like [Arnold] Schwarzenegger in the final scenes of The Terminator'.
If you’re young, your experience of the economy is dominated by the housing situation. And the housing situation in the United States is not very good. So I think for most young people “capitalism” means something like “the status quo system,” and they perceive the status quo system to be pretty bad because they are super exposed to the single most dysfunctional element of the status quo economic system.
“When the people we accuse of being socialists admit that they are socialists, it’s not an attack that stings as much,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist. “Having a new line of attack makes people pay attention.”
the nihilists from THE BIG LEBOWSKI, dressed for combat in the bowling-alley parking lot
screenshot from Guardian liveblog: Halftime: France 0-0 Paraguay Well, that was simply dreadful.
Six more pix from Pride in London, ending with a selfie of us
Six colorful photos from today's Pride in London parade, all of which, alas, would take more time to describe than I have
screenshot of 7/4/22 tweet, from Fox News, with a Trey Gowdy quote: "We do not celebrate the Supreme Court of July 4th, or the due process clause or the legal doctrine of starry decisiveness. We celebrate democracy and the freedom to chart our own course."
Scans of the six BUD MAN stickers that Budweiser produced for the bicentennial, with the Bud Man character in different Revolutionary War tableaux, mostly wearing a tricorne: holding a lantern à la Paul Revere, repairing the cracked Liberty Bell, playing a flute, marching with a Budweiser flag, crossing the Delaware on a boat, and sewing a Budweiser flag à la Betsy Ross.
In his drive to “beautify” the nation’s capital, Mr. Trump seems to have turned portions of the city into either a construction zone or an armed camp as he seeks to prove that he alone can improve a city he interacts with primarily from his armored limousine or presidential helicopter.
Three lo-res (from zooming in on iPhone pix) snapshots of the legendary Ronnie Wood
Tori Barnes, head of the Delaware-incorporated nonprofit that paid for the cross-country series’ production costs, in a statement to POLITICO on Tuesday indicated the show’s rollout might not be imminent. “We are excited that the Great American Road Trip Series will be released in the coming weeks and we look forward to Americans and visitors alike,” she said, “being inspired to take a road trip of their own as we celebrate America’s 250th birthday all year long.”
From the Guardian liveblog: HALF TIME: England 0-1 DR Congo England are 45 minutes away from falling victim to one of the great World Cup shocks.
By the time Elon Musk walked away from DOGE last year, state humanities councils were left with just enough cash to keep them from going under. Then, the Trump administration redirected tens of millions of dollars from the DOGE cuts toward the president’s plans for a triumphal arch and a statuary garden of “American heroes” in Washington, D.C. In the end, Trump’s focus on the nation’s landmark birthday made it harder for local groups across the country to plan their own celebratory projects.
"Oscillococcinum is a homeopathic product that I keep on hand at all times. As soon as someone starts to feel a cold coming on, we start taking it."
snapshot of a window sign: REMNANTS CUSHION FLOOR VYNAL 1/2 PRICE AND LESS
From the ROSEMARY'S BABY film poster: the cradle, a black silhouette against an eerie green background
screenshot of a bit of a job listing for "Member of Editorial Staff" with my commentary: "Seriously, 100+ writers and editors rushed to apply for a job at Anthropic, a company that plans to make them obsolete? What on earth would lead them to do that?" and then the answer: a projected annual salary of $295,000 to $345,000.
5 Admiral Terrace in Edinburgh, an attractive albeit unremarkable red door of a Victorian house
The front door of 160 Bruntsfield Place, where Muriel Spark was born
I’m sorry but the defending is madness. Scotland are literally asking for this.
There are good reasons not to swim or wade in the pool — and both actions are forbidden by law — but arresting people for putting their hand in the water is grotesque. And it repeats a now familiar and maddening pattern of events during Trump’s second presidency, alienating Americans from cherished institutions and beloved places. Touching water is innocent, but now it is a Trumpian crime, proving Trumpian conspiracy theories.
Trump tweet Jun 24, 2016: Just arrived in Scotland. Place is going wild over the vote. They took their country back, just like we will take America back. No games!
Pew country-by-country chart showing: "Fewer believe the U.S. contributes to peace and stability around the world than in 2023"
Two posters—VOTE REMAIN 23 JUNE and one of Donald Trump kissing Boris Johnson with VOTE IN 23RD JUNE—and a snapshot of three anti-Brexit activists leafleting on Commercial Street wearing I'M IN/VOTE REMAIN T-shirts