A San Francisco bookstore called the Booksmith (I think it’s unrelated to the old Paperback Booksmith chain) has stopped selling J. K. Rowling’s books because of the causes she supports. It’s unclear whether they’ll decline orders for the books or have just stopped stocking them. It won’t surprise anyone that the controversy has gotten ugly.
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In an earlier post, I wrote about a fake census from Judicial Watch, and I added a note about a second mailing where JW told me to return their mail if I wasn’t interested. Any mass mailing will be ignored by most people, but this one must have been a flop of colossal dimensions, one so monumental it left them grasping for explanations. This week I got two pieces of US mail from them on the same day. One of them (I tossed the other after a quick glance) said on the envelope: “As a commonsense conservative, you have an enormous stake in draining the Washington swamp and dismantling the Deep State. Yet you weren’t one of the tens of thousands who’ve answered my letters about our success exposing deep State corruption at the FBI, Justice and State Departments. I’m the president of Judicial Watch, and I think I know why…”
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One more post on convention codes of conduct. The information here is based on an entry in File 770 (scroll down to item 7). The writers’ organization Codex has permanently revoked Savil Lavingia’s membership. Codex’s notice, according to the entry, consisted of the following:
The Codex Board has reviewed your case and permanently revoked your membership due to concerns raised by members about your activities at DOGE that violate our Code of Conduct and make our members feel unsafe. We strive to maintain a space where diversity is celebrated and all members feel safe and included around each other.
The 1929 film, Frau im Mond or Woman in the Moon, was the first feature film to present space travel realistically. I’m amazed at how much it got right, considering Fritz Lang released it 40 years before the first human stepped on the Moon. Of course, it has some errors that are obvious today, but a lot of modern space movies don’t do as well.
The best part is the trip to the Moon, which occupies about 40 minutes of a film which is 2 3/4 hours long. Once the hatch opens and the travelers step out onto the Moon, the science goes bonkers. So I’ve created a video with my accompaniment of that sequence. It starts with the call to stations 50 minutes before launch and ends when the hatch is opened on the lunar surface. The video contains German intertitles with English translations below them.
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Today, June 19, 2025, is a federal holiday officially called Juneteenth National Independence Day, more often just Juneteenth. It commemorates the announcement by Major General Gordon Granger in 1865 that, per the Emancipation Proclamation, all slaves in Texas were free. Texas was the last Confederate state where the Emancipation Proclamation went into force.
This is certainly a day worth commemorating, even if it wasn’t the final abolition of slavery in the USA (that happened only when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified). I just wish it had a more forceful name. “Juneteenth” is meaningless; it doesn’t even tell you exactly what day it falls on. The full name is seldom used, probably because it would be confused with Independence Day on July 4. The obvious name for it is “Emancipation Day,” which some people use informally.
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Sometimes there is so much idiocy in the news that you have to unpack it layer by layer. This is the case with a statement which Florida governor DeSantis made and the way some people have described it.
In an interview, DeSantis said: “We also have a policy that if you’re driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle and threatens you, you have a right to flee for your safety. … You drive off and hit one of these people — that’s their fault for impinging on you. You don’t have to sit there and just be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and parade you through the streets. You have a right to defend yourself in Florida.”
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Classical music lovers know that in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, composers shifted from seeking patrons to support them to becoming freelance composers and performers of their own work. This was partially because of cultural changes, but I learned recently that legal factors also played a role. A key decision in British law was Bach v Longman, where judge Lord Mansfield ruled in 1777 that printed music was protected by copyright.
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Things have gotten steadily worse just in the past week. Trump’s goons have assaulted a US Senator. He has illegally deployed the military against American civilians. Today is a day of protest, and it’s quite possible the administration will respond with violence.
Stay calm and stay focused. Things may yet come to an armed uprising, but this isn’t the time.
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My new Bandcamp album, No Truce with Kings, is available as a payment-optional download. The songs are:
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Follow King George III on Bluesky as he pledges to Make Britain Great Again. Reposts and likes will help this new account to get noticed.