McNamara's preference for statistical models over institutional instincts makes me think of Billy Beane clashing with his scouts in Moneyball.

Excommunication Scene from Becket YouTube video by Bernard Fischer

Bluesky and TradCaths be like:

"How dare the Pope quote woke moralists unfamiliar with Just War Theory like... *checks notes* St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas!" J.D. Vance

Pope Leo vs Trump and the Iran War got me thinking of dialogue between Catholic, just war theory Bluesky and defense-milspec Bluesky. So when someone asks "Is the Iran War justified?" you can go "Well, I just read THEORY" and pull out De Civitate Dei, the Summa and On War by Clausewitz.

Brendan's a cool dude. We went to In-N-Out in Anaheim in 2017 when he visited LA to see his mom. We both have Mexican ancestry, so naturally we hit it off. I talked about dropping the conservative label, as Trump had injected the conservative movement with a lethal dose of poison.

In another life, I had a brief stint in the Catholic blogosphere. That's how I met the Hodges from Darwin Catholic. I was the RPG Catholic, but the RPG stood for Elder Scrolls RPGs, not so much DnD, although Morrowind is my favorite of the series and had dice roll mechanics.

-> mistaked River Tam for Drew, accidentally sent Drew a Cyndaquil plushie. Sorry, you two! -> Met the Liberal Currents crew (Adam, Alex) - followed Sharon on Twitter before Elon ruined it -> went to BlueSky -> Still Catholic but not MAGA. Weird liberal conservative incoherent mess? I’m not sure.

I’m not even sure how to describe my intellectual journey. Lapsed Catholic - Brony after reading a blog post on the Siris blog about the Care Bears-> Ed Feser Thomist-pilled -> join Thomist Discussion on Facebook -> Met Drew Summit, who told me about white nationalism in the brony fandom ->

Scanning the “volumes” on the Josias webpage, I recognize a few names. HHG is definitely Timothy, that’s his Steam handle. Jeffrey Bond is also a Facebook Friend. Admittedly, I don’t know Bond too well, but his devotion to integralism does come off strong, in retrospect.

I really need to convince Tim the real enemy is not the Radical Left or Woke Prog Catholics, but Amazon for turning our old Kindles into bricks if we accidentally reset them.

On the Book of Faces, he goes by “Timothy Gerard Aloysius Wilson.”

Did you know Timothy? Not that I want to badmouth him, because he seemed cool to me. I still have him as a Steam friend. We both really like Skyrim, it seems. He really likes collecting old Scholastic-Thomist manuals.

I knew the Josiasites before the 2016 election and before Vermeule joined the moment. I thought it was typical tradcath, TLM-only stuff. Adding MAGA to the mix turned it from fringe pipe dream to “okay, now we have to worry someone in the admin will try making integralism a thing.” *cough* Vance

I got to know some folks from Liberal Currents like Adam Gurri and Alex D. Cole. Through River Tam on Twitter I noticed Sharon tweeting up a storm and shared nerdy interests. I don’t know where I’m going with this, but I went from the integralism -> anti-integralism pipeline without even knowing it.

Back in the early 2010s, I knew a few conservative Catholic friends on Facebook who were into integralism and even wrote for the Josias. Of course, I was young and naive and had no clue what integralism really entailed until recently.

The Angels had the Trout-Ohtani combo for six years, so you'd assume they'd make at least one playoff appearance. I guess the rest of the team must have really held them back.

Alasdair MacIntyre - Against Rod Dreher's so called "Benedict Option" YouTube video by seraphist

Alasdair MacIntyre (channeling Amy Tan on the Simpsons), to Dreher: "No, that's not what I meant at all. You couldn't have gotten it more wrong. Please just sit down, I'm embarrassed for the both of us."

Hearing some of my conservative Christian friends backing Trump in 2016, I had my suspicions the "Trump is repellent, but he's gonna pack the Supreme Court with conservative judges, so we can live with it" idea was a powerful motivator.

Dereliction of Duty 2: Donald Trump, Dumb McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Iran

As far as French Thomism: Simon, Maritain, Gilson, yes; Garrigou-Lagrange, not so much.

Also:

Grant and Sherman's memoirs, but for the average Union soldier, James A. McPherson drew from thousands of letters and diaries:

Aside from fanboyism that doesn’t take kindly to criticism, those commenters dismiss Digital Foundry work as either pointless (because subjective, anecdotal experience trumps objective analysis) or malicious (Digital Foundry is biased against Nintendo or stirring up console warriors for clicks).

Is that R/NintendoSwitch? Almost every time a Digital Foundry video gets posted there, you get lots of “it works fine for me” responses. There’s also the implicit, and sometimes explicit, sense that many commenters don’t see any value in objective console performance and image quality analysis.

Josh from "Drake and Josh" holding a Spheal.

"It's Spherical!"

John Rocker NY comment made in 1999 YouTube video by Arthur M

Known New York City hater/racist, John Rocker.

youtu.be/Y0lQNtcDv6I?...

"Try speaking New Yorker; it's the only language I understand."