For some reason, I got hooked on this series, the continuing adventures of Molly Gray, a maid at a posh Manhattan hotel.
She's neurodivergent, which has caused her problems in the past, but that seems to have been toned down a bit
for this entry. She's worked her way to the top of her department, she's assembled a team of loyal colleagues and
friends, and she's about to marry the hotel's gifted pastry chef, Juan. (They're "living in sin", a little surprising,
but OK.)
And the hotel is about to host an episode of the "Hidden Treasures" TV series, where a couple of charismatic gay appraisers
evaluate objects brought before them. On a lark, Molly contributes some knickknacks she and her late, beloved, grandmother Flora
accumulated, including a prominent object from the previous novel. And the revelation of its true provenance shocks everyone,
especially Molly. Even more shocking: (book flap spoiler a-coming) a daring and mysterious heist is perpetrated during
its auction!
Molly's narrative is interspersed with chapters from Flora's discovered diary, in which her riches-to-rags story is detailed.
(The author, Nita Prose, is pretty skilled at giving Flora her own "voice", very flowery, and distinct from Molly's.) It's
pretty lurid, with an eventual murder.
Not my usual cup of tea, not even when served up in my favorite china cup. But, as I said, I'm hooked.
The Library of Congress today said a coding error resulted in the deletion of parts of the US Constitution from Congress' website and promised a fix after many Internet users pointed out the missing sections this morning.
"It has been brought to our attention that some sections of Article 1 are missing from the Constitution Annotated (constitution.congress.gov) website," the Library of Congress said today. "We've learned that this is due to a coding error. We have been working to correct this and expect it to be resolved soon."
And (sure enough) the "disappeared" bits included "part of" Article I, Section 8. Also "the section
on habeas corpus".
Putin’s response to Trump’s 50-day ultimatum — to agree to “a deal” by Sept. 3 or face severe economic consequences — was intensified attacks on Ukraine’s population centers. Trump’s subsequent 10-day ultimatum, expiring Friday, seems to have been equally unavailing. Putin aims to get not to negotiations but to Kyiv, because only extinguishing Ukraine’s nationhood can redeem his epochal blunder.
Although Putin has been certified a “genius” (by Trump; Putin has not reciprocated), not since Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union 84 summers ago has a military undertaking been as comprehensively counterproductive for its initiator as Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
As GFW notes, Trump's "deadline" expires tomorrow, and here's hoping it won't be another TACO Friday.
A big dose of reality.
Kevin D. Williamson is (as usual) out of patience with the folks trying
to resuscitate a long-dead horse:
Moving Beyond the Two-State Solution.
About two years ago, I had a conversation with a gentleman who has served at the highest levels of the U.S. defense and intelligence apparatus. He spoke of the necessity of a continued U.S. commitment to the so-called two-state solution in Israel and the Palestinian territories—“so-called,” I write, because there are not two states, and because there are not going to be two states, and because it is not a solution. (Other than that … ) I asked him what seemed and seems to me to be the obvious question: How do we expect to have two states when the undeniable and repeatedly demonstrated fact of the matter is that Palestinian sovereignty and Israeli security are incompatible?
“We can’t let that be the case,” he non-answered. “There is no alternative.”
The two-state solution calls to mind many similar regional phantoms, the will-o’-the-wisps of Middle Eastern discourse, e.g., a nuclear deal that the Iranians will honor. Why have an Iranian nuclear deal? Because the alternative is not having an Iranian nuclear deal, which apparently is unthinkable. (Or was, until somebody thought of something better.) Why commit ourselves to a two-state solution for the Palestinians? Because we must, because TINA says so. You know TINA: “There Is No Alternative,” a declaration that seems to be invested with magical powers in the minds of people who cannot accept that some problems are practically irresolvable.
But there is an alternative, the one nobody likes but the one we are likely to have for a long time: the status quo.
KDW's Dispatch article is
a "counterpoint" to John Aziz's "point" article:
Palestinian Statehood Is the Only Answer. I find (unsurprisingly) KDW to be more attached to reality, but (as I know I don't need to tell you) see what
you think.
In so much of the discussion of tax cuts, whether of the recent one or previous tax cuts, we hear that the highest-income people got the biggest tax cuts. Of course, they did. They pay a disproportionately high percent of overall federal taxes. So it shouldn’t be surprising that they get the biggest tax cuts in absolute terms.
But that doesn’t mean that the highest-income people got the highest percentage tax cut. Reporters have generally not done a good job of making that point.
NHJournal's Damien Fisher shows that some Nashua (NH) pols seem to lack LFOD understanding:
Free Speech Advocates Push Back on Nashua Display Ban. I've swiped the photo illustration from his article, at your right. The caption is…
Nashua resident Laurie Ortolano's public comment time was cut short Monday night after she displayed a homemade sign apperantly [sic] calling a member of the city Board of Aldermen an Asshat.
"Apparently". Misspelling aside, I think Damien could have safely omitted that word.
But Derek T (Thibeault) is not the sole asshat among the aldermen:
Alderman Rick Dowd is leading the push for an ordinance that would prohibit any display items in the chambers during public meetings.
“There’s no need for debate. This ordinance is going to make it a rule we can enforce,” Dowd said Monday night during a meeting of the Personnel/Administrative Affairs Committee.
According to Dowd, the signs, banners, and flags displayed at public meetings have gotten out of hand. He claims some attendees are blocking cameras and obstructing others’ views with large signs, and that the displays could potentially block emergency exits. While Nashua previously operated under an unwritten “gentlemen’s agreement” against such displays, Dowd said too many members of the public now ignore that tradition and bring their signs anyway.
Damien quotes from a letter sent to Nashua's Personnel and Administrative Affairs Committee
from the New England First Amendment Coalition, which you can read
here; it also includes the text
of the proposed, clearly unconstitutional, ordinance.
Laurie Ortolano, by the way, is an occasional contributor to Granite Grok, and her
author page is
here.
The first Trump administration was the best for space policy in decades. From the creation of the Space Force to pathbreaking international agreements such as the Artemis Accords to stronger protections for outer space property rights, America reasserted itself as the world’s premier space power. None of this would have been possible without a team of space policy experts and political leaders in key roles.
But this time is different. Many important space policy and leadership positions remain vacant. Qualified personnel have been nominated, but the Senate has yet to act. Nor has President Trump chosen to force the issue.
Reading between the lines, apparently at least some of the ball-dropping is fallout from
the Trump-Musk split. Sad!
One obvious problem is the
continuing existence
of
Artemis/SLS.
On its face, it sounds like the Bureau of Labor Statistics has an easy task: Just count the jobs. A lot of people have jobs, some people don’t, they’re all out there, just count them up.
Of course, it can’t literally go and count every person each month, so it uses statistical methods to survey employees and employers. But people have been doing surveys forever. Just send them out and run it through a computer and write the report. Easy.
No. Not at all. Not even close.
Click over for the gory details. But I found this detail telling:
The original estimate for the number of jobs in the month of June was 159,724,000. Then, after the revision with better data, it was 159,466,000. That’s a 0.161 percent correction, based on higher-quality information that didn’t exist at the time of the original estimate.
Don't worry, once Trump gets his new BLS commissioner, the numbers will be perfectly
accurate, and will come festooned with rainbows, unicorns, and Hello Kitty stickers.
3. Time spent behind unbelievably old ladies searching for exact change in small, floral change purses
In a normal week, a typical American spends 4-6 hours in line behind feeble nonagenarians rummaging through tiny, flower-covered change purses as they attempt to pay for miniscule transactions with exact change. Economists sometimes count the number of people lined up behind these antediluvian crones and multiply that by the number of times in an hour that they hear someone mutter “Come the fuck on, Betty White” to compile a number they call “the granny grocery store metric”.
When times are tough, Americans can spend 10, 12, even 15 hours a week as dust-covered biddies who look like they probably remember the Hapsburg Empire search for the precise amount of money to buy a book of matches, or a single Tic-Tac. This happens because senior citizens worry that they might not be able to make ends meet if they don’t bring an entire fucking Albertsons to a stand-still while they rummage for a ha’penny that Grover Cleveland tossed from a carriage in 1885. When the economy is hot, these four-foot-tall Wives Of Yoda might produce paper money, or even a bank card that they have no clue how to use. But there’s a well-proven inverse relationship between the time that World War I surplus grannies spend literally blocking commerce and overall economic health.
God bless the old folks, but yeah: when you see the van from the local assisted living facility pulled
up outside the supermarket, you might want to hit the self-checkout scanners.
Friday brought disappointing news from the Labor Department on U.S. job growth. President Donald Trump’s decision to fire the official responsible for the report will do nothing to increase U.S. hiring. But there was at least one encouraging note in Labor’s otherwise unimpressive release on July employment.
The Journal’s Rachel Wolfe and Justin Lahart quote Jed Kolko of the Peterson Institute for International Economics:
Federal-government layoffs continued to drag on payrolls, with that sector losing 12,000 jobs. Compared with 1.3% growth in 2024, Kolko said, employment in the sector has fallen at an annualized rate of 5.5%.
This is progress in addressing the country’s most important challenge—a government that has grown far beyond the country’s ability to afford it. So far, federal spending hasn’t shown the same decline, although a Commerce Department report earlier last week noted a welcome second straight quarter of falling real federal consumption expenditures and gross investment.
Conversely, CPB is laying off its entire staff in a righteous, indignant huff. None of these people needed to lose their jobs if their leadership served their organization by listening to views beyond their own insular circle of enablers. The demise of the CPB now stands as the most impressive and unnecessary act of self-termination since the appearance of Judean People’s Front Crack Suicide Squad:
"That showed 'em, huh?"
It's not just something you do to a flat tire.
Kevin D. Williamson asks:
Remember Inflation?
And brings his usual brutal honesty to bear:
Trump has inflated many things over the years—his assets on bank statements, his romantic résumé, his book sales—and inflation is the sort of thing that must come naturally to such a gasbag. Prices are already creeping up, with firms such as Adidas, Procter & Gamble, and Stanley Black & Decker announcing tariff-driven price increases. Groceries aren’t getting any cheaper, and neither is housing, the main driver of the late-summer uptick. But prices are getting higher across the marketplace, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics runs the numbers, finding higher prices for “household furnishings and operations, medical care, recreation, apparel, and personal care.” The few bright spots include used cars and airfares, which may indicate that people are simply putting off car purchases and skipping summer vacations under economic pressure.
Tariffs are a tax—let me emphasize here that Republicans’ key achievement in the Trump years has been the unconstitutional enactment of a national sales tax by the unilateral directive of president, without congressional authorization—and, as a tax, a big tariff should be anti-inflationary: The more money you pay in taxes, the less money you have to spend on cars and vacations and such.
But tariffs are an especially dumb and destructive kind of tax in that they do not produce a great deal of revenue in proportion to the economic distortion they introduce. Given that the tariffs are being implemented in parallel with what Republicans insist is “the largest tax cut in American history”—the cut-by-not-raising measure in their poorly conceived and idiotically named tax-and-spending bill—whatever counter-inflationary effect the tariffs might have had is likely to be overwhelmed by the inflationary effects of large cuts to other taxes, even if the extension of the 2017 cuts was far from unexpected. And here it is probably worth pointing out that Republicans are cutting taxes while running a deficit that is projected to be the third largest in American history.
I suppose it's time to liquidate my investments and buy …
gold?
I ordered this book from Amazon back in December.
It came auto-delivered to my Kindle on the release date last month, and I noticed that at some point
a subtitle had bee added: The Final Arkady Renko Novel.
And a few days later, via the
WSJ's book review,
I learned that the author, Martin Cruz Smith, had died on July 11.
Well, darn. I still have the $3.95 paperback of Gorky Park I bought and read back in 1982.
And I've been a diligent follower of Smith's diligent Russian investigator, Arkady Renko, since then.
As the book opens, Arkady needs to get his adopted computer-whiz son, Zhenya, out of the clutches
of the Russian FSB. He was nabbed for protesting Russia's invasion of Ukraine, calling it a "war"
instead of the approved term, "special military operation."
I thought this observation was pointful enough to share at Goodreads:
Once more, Arkady thought, you needed only one book to really understand Russia. Not Tolstoy or Pushkin, not Dostoyevsky or Lermontov, but one his mother used to read to him as a child: Through the Looking-Glass, otherwise known as Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.
Well… those are two separate books, I think. But otherwise, spot on.
Of course, you'd need to add a lot more violence, thuggery, and terror to the Alice books to really get it right.
Soon enough, Arkady is given a murder case: a lower-level defense minister has been brutally murdered at the Hotel Ukraine.
Arkady's investigative skills (and a little bit of happenstance luck) draw him to the father/son team of
Lev and Ivan Volkov, who run the paramilitary "1812 Group".
(Think a barely fictionalized version of the Wagner Group, and its (late) leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, and son Pavel.)
Arkady and his longtime lady friend, journalist Tatiana Petrovna, take a dangerous trip to Ukraine, discovering
atrocities committed by 1812. (And those are barely fictionalized too.)
Soon enough, both Arkady and Tatiana find themselves in extreme peril from Volkov, the 1812 Group, and
their allies in the FSB. Leading to a very cinematic showdown in the sewers and subway tunnels of Moscow.
I will miss Arkady Renko and Martin Cruz Smith a lot. I might do a re-reading project.
AN AMERICAN AIRLINES flight from Wichita, Kan., to Washington, D.C., was on its final approach into Reagan National Airport on Jan. 29 when it collided in midair with a US Army helicopter on a training mission. Both aircraft were engulfed in flames and plunged into the Potomac River. All
67 people
aboard the two aircraft were killed. It was the deadliest domestic aviation disaster in nearly 25 years.
A few days later, 10 people died when a regional airline flight crashed off the coast of Alaska. Shortly after that, there was a near-disaster in Chicago when a Southwest Airlines jet barely avoided colliding with a private plane that had entered the runway at Midway Airport without authorization. In May, the control center at Newark's Liberty Airport experienced a communications blackout when a burnt-out wire triggered an equipment failure, leaving air traffic controllers blind to arriving and departing aircraft for a minute and a half. It was one of three outages in the space of two weeks at Newark, where a shortage of controllers routinely causes flights to be delayed or cancelled.
Some of these tragedies and alarming incidents are still being investigated. But all of them are reminders that America's air traffic control system is in desperate need of reform.
As I said, commercial air travel is pretty safe. But so was the Space Shuttle. Out of 135 launches, it managed to
not kill its entire crew 133 times.
The president of the United States on Tuesday held a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Balmedie, Scotland, to mark the opening of the new Trump International Golf Links, owned by his family (at least until he exits the White House), and designed by his son Eric.
In his cheery promotional remarks, Donald Trump thanked the media ("today they're not fake news, they're wonderful news"), gave a shout-out to his daughter-in-law ("Lara, I want to thank you, the head of the Republican Party"), and praised various dignitaries on hand.
"I want to thank, by the way, the prime minister, who was here last night, and who was really very gracious; loves the place," he said, referencing the United Kingdom's Keir Starmer, who also joined Trump at another of his Scottish golf properties before hopping on Air Force One with the Trump clan for a sneak peek at Balmedie. "This will," the commander in chief predicted, "be a tremendously successful place."
Yeah, I know: he's not Kamala. But that is beginning to wear a little thin.
Well, that was productive—not. President Trump on Friday fired Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after the July jobs report showed that hiring stalled this spring amid his tariff blitz and deportation crackdown. Shooting the messenger won’t help him or the economy.
The BLS estimates a mere 73,000 jobs were added last month, almost all in healthcare and social assistance. It also revised down gains for May and June by a combined 258,000, to a total of 33,000 new jobs, one of the biggest downward revisions in years.
Mr. Trump sniffs a deep-state conspiracy. “Today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad,” the president huffed on Truth Social. Where’s the evidence? There is none.
No evidence? Hey, Trump has all the evidence he needs:
Yup, "Biden Appointee". Case closed!
That's from Nate Silver whose headline may be too optimistic:
Trump's jobs data denialism won't fool anyone. He gets into the statistical weeds, demonstrating there's nothing to see here "RIGGED"-wise.
I’m not sure exactly where firing the BLS commissioner ranks on the list of Trump-related outrages. Even if Congress does its job and McEntarfer is replaced with another competent successor, this could have a chilling effect on BLS and other government agencies to operate independently.
It’s also not surprising given Trump’s previous incursions on the independence of the Federal Reserve and other government agencies. This is the guy who sued a pollster for publishing results he didn’t like.
Unlike in some other instances, though, I don’t see how there’s any real political gain for Trump in yet again undermining longstanding norms and institutions.
America in the 21st century sometimes seems destined to repeat all of the mistakes of the 20th. The latest is President Trump’s desire to release Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from government captivity—along with a government guarantee. Didn’t we learn this was a bad idea the first time?
The President teased on social media recently that “I am working on TAKING THESE AMAZING COMPANIES PUBLIC,” referring to Fannie and Freddie. “I want to be clear, the U.S. Government will keep its implicit GUARANTEES, and I will stay strong in my position on overseeing them as President.” Their share prices surged.
Investors are elated that Mr. Trump plans to re-privatize these firms—especially because he has now made their government backstop explicit. The President may think the feds can keep the housing monsters on a regulatory leash, but the political and financial incentives mean they will invariably revert to their reckless ways.
Here’s a life hack for readers who are trying to lose weight and are discouraged by the numbers on the scale: Take a hammer to the thing. If that seems too destructive, donate it to the Salvation Army and, if you must keep a scale in the house, buy a new model that tops out at 150 pounds.
The secret behind this hack is psychology. It’s hard to eat less than your body wants, which is why people who try to lose weight often fail and feel miserable. But if no working scale is available, you can’t fail: Eat as much as you like; the numbers will never climb.
Sound crazy? It is. But the president has just used a version of this trick to deal with a sagging American jobs market.
Specifically: Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Maybe the next BLS commissioner will be
Chico Marx:
"Well, who you gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?"
.
(paid link)
Mister, we could use a man like…
Matthew Continetti remembers
How P.J. O’Rourke Skewered the Swamp.
Specifically, in his classic Parliament of Whores. (Amazon link at your right.)
We need more of O’Rourke’s philosophy, too. In his final decade the “Republican Party Reptile” found himself, like a lot of people, politically homeless. Donald Trump, MAGA populism, and economic nationalism didn’t appeal to him. Bernie Sanders, socialism, and wokeism didn’t either.
O’Rourke remained an advocate for freedom:
Conservatism is, at least in its American form, a philosophy that relies upon personal responsibility and promotes private liberty. It is an ideology of individuals. Everyone with any sense and experience in life would rather take his fellows one by one than in a crowd. Crowds are noisy, unreasonable, and impatient. They can trample you easier than a single person can. And a crowd will never buy you lunch.
This emphasis on dignity, freedom, and responsibility may seem archaic to the critics of so-called “Zombie Reaganism.” But it is fundamental to humane conservative politics. An American conservatism that has no place for freedom neither inspires nor connects to the wellsprings of the American political tradition: constitutional rule of law and a limited government that makes room for family, church, civil society, and individual choice.
Matthew didn't mention Peej's probably most famous quote:
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
You’re correct that the U.S. economy is now showing signs of the inevitable damage done by Mr. Trump’s tariffs (“The Trump Economy Stumbles,” August 2). Yet some of your wording carelessly grants too much to the administration’s case for protectionism.
You write that “much of the world will now pay 15%, if Mr. Trump sticks to his deals.” Not so. Because – as the evidence shows – pre-tariff import prices aren’t falling, what you mean is that Americans will now pay 15% for imports from much of the world.
It’s therefore inaccurate also to say, as you do, that failure of other countries to retaliate with tariffs of their own means that “that these countries seem willing to absorb the 15% tariff.” These countries are indeed willing to absorb the shrinkage of their U.S. markets rather than risk the further shrinkage that a trade war would cause. But because the president’s tariffs are paid by Americans, the people who are ‘absorbing’ the bulk of the tariffs aren’t foreigners but, rather, American firms and households who are paying the higher prices.
If you need it, here's a
gifted link to the editorial with the language Don proposes fixing.
The vote rescinded $1.1 billion that Congress had allocated to CPB to fund public broadcasting for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. In a press release, CPB explained that the cuts "excluded funding for CPB for the first time in more than five decades." CPB president and CEO Patricia Harrison said the corporation had no choice but to prepare to shut down.
"Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations," Harrison said.
Concerned Americans also rushed to donate to NPR and PBS stations to confront the funding cuts, The New York Times reported. But those donations, estimated at around $20 million, ultimately amounted to too little, too late to cover the funding that CPB lost.
Translation of that last paragraph into reality: "Concerned Americans" turned out to be not Concerned enough.
Not to worry, Uncle Stupid still knows how to waste money.
Rand Simberg describes
Why And How To End SLS Now.
"SLS" is NASA's "Space Launch System". Rand shares three links:
A
summary of Rand's
report at the "New Space Economy" site.
Zimmerman has the most withering commentary. Quoting from that:
Increasingly it appears everyone in Congress, the White House, and NASA, as well as our bankrupt mainstream press, has become utterly divorced from reality in talking about NASA’s Artemis lunar program. The claims are always absurd and never deal with the hard facts on the ground. Instead, it is always “Americans are piorneers! We are great at building things! We are going to beat China to the Moon!”
An interview of interim NASA administration (and Transportation secretary) Sean Duffy yesterday on the Sean Hannity Show made all these delusions very clear. First Hannity introduced Duffy by stating with bald-faced ignorance that “NASA has a brand-new program. It is called Artemis that aims to get astronauts back on the Moon in the next couple of years.”
I emphasize “brand-new” because anyone who has done even two seconds of research on the web will know that Artemis has existed now for more than a decade. Hannity illustrates his incompetence right off the bat.
I've been a space fan for a long time.
I watched the Sputnik I upper stage fly over the Oakland, Iowa football field back in 1957. Didn't like
the commies even back then, but… pretty cool!
But it would be nice if US space exploration could be less "delusional".
President Donald Trump is a busy beaver. There are many things a president must do, as a matter of course. But this one also wants the Cleveland Guardians to become the “Cleveland Indians” again. And the Washington Commanders to become the “Washington Redskins” again. And Coca-Cola to use cane sugar instead of whatever it is the company uses. Etc. Trump is very active on these fronts.
I share his opinion, in some of these cases. (Not sure about “Redskins.”) But, you know? A president ought not to involve himself in every nook and cranny of American life. He is not a national boss or nanny. There should be a private sphere, an apolitical sphere, a non-governmental sphere.
Conservatives taught me this long ago. They were right, I believe (as about virtually everything.) I cannot unlearn what I learned, and accepted, years ago. That is a big reason I’m out of step with the regnant Right today.
The rationale behind New Hampshire's new brewpub regulation is more headache-inducing than the beer.
On Friday, New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) signed House Bill 242 into law. The bill, sponsored by state Rep. John Hunt (R–Rindge), will take effect in August and limits brewpubs in the state to self-distributing their beer to only one additional restaurant or business outside their premises. The bill is a follow-up to H.B. 1380, also sponsored by Hunt in 2024, which limited the amount of beer or cider a brewpub could sell to 2,500 barrels a year and permitted licensed brewpub owners to obtain licenses to sell their product on their premises in bars and at off-premise locations like grocery stores, so long as they didn't have a manufacturing license.
If the law sounds like it will keep brewpubs small, that's because it's intended to do so. "This is what we call a very inside baseball bill," Hunt told the New Hampshire Bulletin.
"Inside baseball" means (I think it's fair to say) that insiders wanted to make sure they wouldn't
have to deal with upstart competition.
Claude, You Magnificent Bastard, I Didn't Read Your Book
(paid link)
Introduction/Rationale
Some readers may have noticed me griping about my blogging "infrastructure" a
few weeks ago. To repeat and summarize:
One of the bits of code I relied on was a Google Chrome extension called
chromix-too. It did something I found incredibly useful:
allowed access to Chrome's "tabs" API from the Linux command line. It was also quite powerful, but I only used it for
four relatively simple things:
Tell me how many tabs I have open;
Tell me the URL of the active tab, and the title of its rendered page;
Open a new inactive tab to a specified URL;
Open a new active tab to a specified URL.
Granted, the last one is easy without an extension. The others don't seem to be, "as far as I can tell."
Alas, chromix-too used some features that Google deprecated years ago. It had a V2 manifest, and maybe violated
other guidelines. And Google promised/warned that it would just stop working eventually.
And, as noted, "eventually" turned out to be "a few weeks ago". An upgraded Google Chrome refused to load chromix-too.
The author of chromix-too seemed uninterested in updating his code. I didn't press him about it.
I toyed with bringing it into compliance
myself. Unfortunately, it was in Javascript, and even though it was but a few thousand
bytes, I found it totally impenetrable. My efforts were feeble and futile.
But I had heard that AI tools, specifically
Claude, could write code for you. A little Googling showed the "right way" to do what
I wanted was via Chrome's
Native Messaging facility.
Which led to my Claude prompt:
I want a Chrome extension using Native Messaging to access the chrome.tabs API from the Linux shell.
When I say "kind of", I'm not kidding.
If you play with this yourself, be aware
there's a bug that I haven't fixed. Described, with my
workaround, at the end. I'll edit this if I ever fix it. Geeky readers, please let me know if you spot the problem.
The Overall Idea
Command Line⇔HTTP Server (7444)⇔Native Host⇔Chrome Extension⇔Chrome APIs
Claude provided the code to go in the middle three boxes.
Code Details
Command Line: you use an HTTP client (I use curl) to talk to the HTTP server
which is listening on localhost port 7444. (That's the port chromix-too used to listen on.)
HTTP Server:
A small (8779 bytes as I type) Python script that interprets the HTTP commands
received from the command line and translates them into appropriate API code.
Its filename is chrome_api_bridge.py, and I installed it in /usr/local/bin
Native Host: A JSON file that serves as a bit of glue between the HTTP server and the actual
extension. It's very small (243 bytes), named com.chrome.api.bridge.json, and in LinuxLand it goes in the
directory
$HOME/.config/google-chrome/NativeMessagingHosts/.
Note for those trying this at home: you have to fill in the ID of the chrome extension in this file. Which you won't know
until you install the extension, which is…
Chrome Extension: A group of four files in their own directory:
manifest.json The extension's JSON manifest (duh);
background.js … and the extension's JavaScript code
popup.html and popup,js … I don't use these, but Claude provided them.
Installation Details
I think you should do things in this order. Sometime next month I will be installing Fedore 43 from scratch,
and if I get anything wrong here, I'll amend.
Assuming you have Linux running and (specifically) Chrome installed normally…
Install the extension. Point your browser at chrome://extensions; turn the
"Developer mode" toggle on; click the "Load unpacked" button; in the resulting dialog,
highlight the directory containing those four extension files, and click "Select".
Copy the 32-character ID you should now see in your new extension's box.
"Register" the Native Host. Edit the file com.chrome.api.bridge.json, pasting that
32-character ID string into the obvious place under the allowed_origins key. Put this file
into the directory $HOME/.config/google-chrome/NativeMessagingHosts/.
Install the HTTP server script. As stated above, I used /usr/local/bin/chrome_api_bridge.py.
You can probably install it anywhere you want, but you'll have to change the path in the glue file
installed in the previous step.
Try it. Return to the chrome://extensions tab and turn the extension on.
And (assuming nothing obviously bad happened) proceed to…
Examples
How do I count Chrome's open tabs? I give the command:
curl -s http://localhost:7444/chrome/tabs/query
This gives JSON output, which I parse, The "result" key has an array value, and the number of items in the array
is the number of open tabs. A complete Perl script:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use English qw( -no_match_vars );
use JSON;
use version; our $VERSION = qv('v2025.07.31');
my $curl_cmd = q{curl -s http://localhost:7444/chrome/tabs/query};
open my $CTQ, q{-|}, $curl_cmd or die "Failed to run curl command: $ERRNO\n";
my $ctq_json = <$CTQ>;
my $status = close $CTQ;
my $decoded = decode_json($ctq_json);
printf "Chrome open tabs: %d\n", scalar @{ $decoded->{'result'} };
That brings up the specified URL as an active window. Bringing it up as an inactive window… is left as an exercise for the reader.
That Darn Bug
Things should "just work" after starting Chrome. They do not. My extension throws an error:
Unchecked runtime.lastError: Native host has exited.
The workaround, which I arrived at after a few hours of trying everything else, is (I am not kidding):
From the chrome://extensions page:
Turn the extension off.
Turn it back on.
And then things seem to work fine.
This is puzzling.
When I Google that error message, all the "fixes" seem to assume a persistent error, that things aren't working at
all. Nothing about problems fixed by "turn it off, then back on." So I'm stumped for now. Again, let me know if you
happen to spot the problem.
Over a couple weeks of blogging hiatus, I totally missed commenting on the irony of
people who claim to be concerned about American "inequality", showering hatred on "the 1%",
also getting steamed about CBS's decision to cancel Stephen Colbert's The Late Show.
Um. Colbert's net worth is
reported to be
around $75 million, with a yearly salary of $15 million.
So you might think the egalitarians would be cheering at this minor decrease in the
Gini coefficient! But no.
And now, American outrage has apparently moved on from Colbert to Sydney Sweeney. Who's apparently gonna be starring in
a remake of
Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS
or something.
But never mind that. What I'd really like to lead off with today is
something that's been bugging me for years, and I may have alluded to it now and again,
but not as eloquently as Jeff Jacoby did recently:
The problem with 'Are you proud to be an American?'. After looking at (among other things) Gallup's polling on that very question:
Gallup has been asking the question in essentially the same form for over two decades, making it a useful barometer of national sentiment. And yet, looked at closely, the question is clumsy. Respondents aren't being asked about their pride in America, or America's achievements, or America's values. The question Gallup keeps polling is about people's pride in being American. But what does it mean to be proud of something you didn't choose or achieve?
Most Americans were born in this country, which is no more of an accomplishment than being born in February. The case is different for naturalized immigrants, who become Americans by choice, often devoting much time, effort, and commitment to do so. For them, "being an American" is indeed an achievement for which they're entitled to feel proud. That is because pride, to be meaningful, requires agency: You are entitled to be proud of the things you have done, the learning you have acquired, the contributions you have made — but not of mere accidents of birth you had no say in.
What Jeff doesn't mention is the small problem alluded to by our Amazon Product du Jour, up there on your right:
As someone who has been Catholic-adjacent for decades, I can tell you: pride is a sin. And not
one of the minor ones: it's a deadly sin, right up there with
Lust,
Gluttony,
Greed,
Sloth,
Wrath, and
Envy!
So if Gallup, or anyone, asks if you're proud to be an American, please feel free to explain this to
them.
Also of note:
Something I won't be doing.
The latest print issue of Reason has an article by Bekah Congdon, who discusses
her recent travels:
Losing My Religion and Finding My Humanity on a Peruvian Ayahuasca Retreat. And it includes the following experience, after a couple doses of
the "viscous substance" which is "dark brown and opaque and tastes like a tragic combination of Vegemite and prune juice, with an earthy aftertaste that lingers."
Another 30 minutes later, our main facilitator, Rosie, checked on me. I reported feeling miserable but unable to vomit. Rosie said something I couldn't hear through the fog of my own discomfort. When I looked at her indignantly, she simply said, "Bekah: Focus."
With this instruction, I picked up my bucket, placed it in front of me, and got on all fours. Staring into the bucket, I commanded myself: "Puke." Whether it was my instruction that did it or just the effect of jostling myself around, I did begin to vomit, immediately and a lot. It was intense, but it passed quickly enough. The nausea gave way not simply to the expected after-puking relief but to such a feeling of comfort and peace that I lay back down and reveled for a while in gratitude that I no longer felt ill.
There's something I won't be putting on my bucket list: barfing into a bucket in Peru.
(paid link)
Not even Ketanji Brown Jackson thought it meant that.
In a recent article in print-National Review, Bryan A. Garner shares
some anecdotes about his friend and co-author Antonin Scalia:
‘Nobody Ever Thought It Meant That’.
(NR gifted link)
In my kitchen in January 2013, I suggested to [Scalia] that attacking something called the living Constitution was a mistake: “Find another name for it,” I said.
“But everyone calls it the living Constitution.”
“You’re losing the debate in the minds of the American people. They don’t want the opposite of a living Constitution.”
“Are you saying I’ve made a mistake over the past 30 years by using the other side’s terminology?”
“I think so. If you instead asked the American people whether they’d rather have a stable Constitution or a highly volatile one that morphs without amending it, what would they say?”
“Stable, no doubt,” he said. “I can’t believe I’ve never thought of this before.”
That evening, Scalia and I made a presentation to a large audience at Southern Methodist University. Midway through our talk, he said: “I used to say that the Constitution is not a living document. It’s dead, dead, dead. But I’ve gotten better. I no longer say that. The truth is that the Constitution is not one that morphs. It’s an enduring Constitution, not a changing Constitution.” I was keenly aware of his words, and I made a note of them the next morning.
I encourage you to click through to find out how the Dallas Morning News misreported that speech.
I was tempted to check out the book Scalia and Garner wrote from the Portsmouth (NH) Public Library, but alas, it
was more of a reference work for lawyers. But… Amazon link at your right!
I'd say: "Mom". Mom decides.
But that's me. Ryne Weiss has an article that investigates
how people can be led into free-speech enlightenment:
‘Who decides?’: The question that shatters the illusion of censorship as safety. And it leads off with this quote from Christopher Hitchens, who made it
at University of Toronto’s Hart House Debating Club.
Did you hear any speaker in opposition to this motion, eloquent as one of them was, to whom you would delegate the task of deciding for you what you could read? Do you know anyone? Hands up. Do you know anyone to whom you would give this job? Does anyone have a nominee? You mean there’s no one in Canada good enough to decide what I can read or hear? I had no idea.
You could die of a misprint, or…
Dave Barry brings the sad news of his demise:
Death by AI.
I found out about my death the way everybody finds out everything: from Google.
What happened was, I Googled my name ("Dave Barry") and what popped up was something called “Google AI Overview.” This is a summary of the search results created by Artificial Intelligence, the revolutionary world-changing computer tool that has made it possible for college students to cheat more efficiently than ever before.
Dave's battle with Google's AI is hilarious.
I sympathize, sort of. I share a name with
a semi-famous actor.
He is, at last report, still alive and well, and so am I.
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