Norman Finkelstein talks about the mess that Noam Chomsky got into with his second wife, Epstein. Confirmation of what was already known, but it is pretty upsetting to hear it from someone who knew Chomsky for >40 years.

Today I go to the first graduation ceremony I've been to in a long time. I graduated high school, left Stanford to build Theranos, got my honorary doctorate, and now walk for the Law Apprenticeship I completed. The symbolism of doing so for Constitutional law studies while held in a prison, fighting to prove my innocence, is radiating through me today. There is no greater way I know to protect liberty than to defend our Constitution when it is trampled upon.

rereading John Williams' "Stoner" after many years & seeing now that my initial disappointment with this novel was that I'd read it in a context of Faulkner, Nabokov, Ralph Ellison, Bellow etc. (inventive stylists) & not in the early-20th century naturalism tradition (Dreiser, Frank Norris, Sinclair Lewis) of flat summary prose examining individuals like specimens. "Stoner" is a sort of revising of the Biblical Job stuck in a provincial college, dull loveless marriage, stalled career, terrible colleagues, but Stoner is redeemed through his teaching & love of literature. (though the author makes no effort to suggest the excitement of inspired teaching.) set beside the dazzling stylists, "Stoner" is flat as a sidewalk; as a successor to Sinclair Lewis with a happy ending (of a kind), it is more explicable. the story of Job is encouraging to some, it suggests that others have it worse than you, so rejoice.