On this special Friday, why not have two miscellanea? I have noticed a lot of gloom lately so in order to counteract it, let's recall that lovely quote from Horace Walpole: "Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel." So here are some things that I found particularly joyful this week:
- Sam Bankman-Fried, financial fraudster, was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison (marked down from a possible 110). He is likely to find himself in a low-security prison where he will be able to pursue things like ceramics and playing the harmonica (really!). One should be aware that he was very influenced by utilitarian moral philosophy growing up--an excellent example of how badly that usually works out.
- From the unintended consequences file: when Twitter banned Donald Trump from its site he founded a new social media site called Truth Social. This week it went public resulting in a windfall for Mr. Trump of approximately $5 billion.
- Some especially good news for those worried about climate change: it happens that, not only are we not in a particularly warm period in Earth's climatic history, we are actually still coming out of a recent ice age, the Late Cenozoic.
- Beyoncé does country: I find this image particularly enjoyable for its sheer artificiality. That's not a possible configuration of a horse's legs while running, you can't possibly sit on a horse that way, especially while it is running and good grief:
- And finally I discovered something interesting about humour. Sometimes my sense of humour gets a bit out of hand and I apologize for it by saying it is just "Canadian humour." I was teasing a couple of businessmen about selling their company this week and they said, "That's not Canadian humour, that's Irish humour!" I never knew!
And here's that song:
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