This is the eighty-first chapter in Other People’s Thoughts, a China Heritage series inspired by a compilation of quotations put together by Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans), one of our Ancestors, during his reading life.
Pierre remarked that the resulting modest volume of quotations was ‘idiosyncratically compiled for the amusement of idle readers’ (see Simon Leys, Other People’s Thoughts, 2007). Our aim is similar: to amuse our readers (idle or otherwise); as is our modus operandi: to build up an idiosyncratic compilation, one that reflects the interests of The Wairarapa Academy for New Sinology and its coterie.
In collecting this material, and by adding to it over time, we accord also with a Chinese literary practice in which quotations — sometimes called yǔlù 語錄, literally ‘recorded sayings’ — have a particular history, and a powerful resonance.
The most famous collection of recorded sayings is The Analects 論語, compiled by disciples of Confucius. Then there is the timeless 5000-words of Laozi’s The Tao and the Power 道德經, as well as the Chan/Zen 禪宗 tradition of what in English are known by the Japanese term kōan 公案, dating from the Tang dynasty. Modern imitations range from the political bon mots of Mao Zedong to excerpts from the prolix prose of Xi Jinping’s tireless speech writers, and published snippets from arm-chair philosophers and motivational speakers.
Other People’s Thoughts also finds inspiration in the ‘poetry talks’ 詩話, ‘casual jottings’ 筆記 and ‘marginalia’ 眉批 of China’s literary tradition.
***
As is now customary in Other People’s Thoughts, this chapter in the series also includes videos and illustrative material. Our thanks to Samuel George for suggestion the quotation from Joan Didion and to Reader #1 for the bureaucratic aperçu.
— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
1 July 2026
Curled up under blossoms on a summer’s day,
not a thought in the world as they nap away.
What good after all is it to fuss and carry on?
Nothing they do is ever going to make a buck.
— 老樹，宜勞逸結合，《老樹日曆》，2026年6月29日
They had decided their life was a long, sunny afternoon, and they had decided to spend it napping.
— JG Ballard, Cocaine Nights
***
Other People’s Thoughts LXXXI
***
Reading
“I read my eyes out and can’t read half enough. The more one reads the more one sees we have to read. … Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write. … I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading? … The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know.”
— John Adams
In Retrospect
“And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore. I’ve finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun. This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt.”
— Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
Just Don’t Mention Plato
Dear Colleagues,
My last day at Texas A&M will be July 31. On August 1, I will join Southern Methodist University in Dallas as the Scurlock Chair in Al Ethics. Here is my message to Interim Dean North:
Dear Interim Dean North,
I am writing to notify you that I will resign from my tenured position at Texas A&M
University, effective July 31, 2026. (See the attached letter.)I have met many inspiring colleagues and friends at Texas A&M, and it has been a great pleasure to teach thousands of students. However, I strongly oppose the Board of Regents’ new censorship policy. No other serious research university maintains a policy on “prohibited instruction.” As Chair of the Academic Freedom Council, I regard this as an outright violation of one of the most basic principles of academic freedom. Faculty-not a politically appointed boardshould control the curriculum.
I admire the many federal prosecutors across the country who have chosen to resign rather than carry out illegal or immoral orders. To my knowledge, no department head, dean, or other administrator at Texas A&M has taken any meaningful action to defend academic freedom. As John Stuart Mill points out in On Liberty, certain ideas must be “fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed”; otherwise, they will “be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.” Because faculty no longer control the curriculum, Texas A&M is quickly becoming an institution of dead dogmas.
Sincerely,
Martin Peterson
Sue G. and Harry E. Bovay Jr. Chair
Department of Philosophy
Texas A&M University
Pax
“If we want the world to live in peace, we must begin with ourselves.”
“Enough with insults, enough with bullying, enough with all those things that wage war between people, between communities, between countries!”
— Pope Leo XIV
The Return of Demiurges
While in the West the first half of the twentieth century taught politicians the virtues of restraint, the passing of the last generation to have experienced world war has enabled the return of demiurges who are reinventing reality and claiming to mould it to their will.
All the guardrails of the old world the respect for the independence of certain institutions, human and minority rights, a concern for international repercussions have no value now that the hour of the predator is upon us.
— Giuliano da Empoli, The Hour of the Predator, 2025, p.65
Umarell
Umarell, from the Bolognese-Emilian word umarèl: men of retirement age who spend their time watching construction sites, especially roadworks – stereotypically with hands clasped behind their back and offering unsolicited advice.
The Past is Present
When he was asked how to prepare to play a role in world politics, Kissinger would quote Winston Churchill: ‘Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.’ This is the height of transgression in an age when the Borgians are betting on our fading memories to rewrite history and reopen the wounds that festered into the anti-democratic movements of the first half of the twentieth century, while the tech overlords use their ignorance of the past as a marketing strategy.
— da Empoli, The Hour of the Predator, pp.115-116
Resigned
Starmer was culpable by absence rather than endeavour. I’m sure there really is a decent man in there somewhere. I imagine we’ll see more of it in future. He’ll make a better elder statesman than he has a leader. But when it mattered, he wasn’t there. When basic moral norms needed to be protected, he went missing.
— Ian Dunt, 22 June 2026
Identity
Identity politics, so-called, are often condemned for making what you are more important than what you do, but the other side of them is that they make what you want to be as important as what you’re supposed to be, allowing people to choose the identity they desire even in the face of the identity they were told they ought to have.
— Adam Gopnik, The Knicks and the Cage Fight, The New Yorker, 29 June 2026
Boat of Cypress《柏舟》
- 汎彼柏舟、亦汎其流。
耿耿不寐、如有隱憂。
微我無酒、以敖以遊。
It floats about, that boat of cypress wood;
Yea, it floats about on the current.
Disturbed am I and sleepless,
As if suffering from a painful wound.
It is not because I have no wine,
And that I might not wander and saunder about.
- 我心匪鑒、不可以茹。
亦有兄弟、不可以據。
薄言往愬、逢彼之怒。
My mind is not a mirror; —
It cannot [equally] receive [all impressions].
I, indeed, have brothers,
But I cannot depend on them,
I meet with their anger.
- 我心匪石、不可轉也。
我心匪席、不可卷也。
威儀棣棣、不可選也。
My mind is not a stone; — It cannot be rolled about.
My mind is not a mat; — It cannot be rolled up.
My deportment has been dignified and good,
With nothing wrong which can be pointed out.
- 憂心悄悄、慍于群小。
覯閔既多、受侮不少。
靜言思之、寤辟有摽。
My anxious heart is full of trouble;
I am hated by the herd of mean creatures;
I meet with many distresses;
I receive insults not a few.
Silently I think of my case,
And, starting as from sleep, I beat my breast.
- 日居月諸、胡迭而微。
心之憂矣、如匪澣衣。
靜言思之、不能奮飛。
There are the sun and moon, —
How is it that the former has become small, and not the latter?
The sorrow cleaves to my heart,
Like an unwashed dress.
Silently I think of my case,
But I cannot spread my wings and fly.
— Book of Poetry: Lessons from the States: Odes Of Bei 《詩經·邶風·柏舟》, trans. James Legge
Strine
I had forgotten how rich Strine was, and maybe still is (though the word Strine seems to have gone to God — my kids, aged 30 and 28, have no idea what it means). Some of the old words readers reminded me of were absolute corkers, rippers and pearlers. Jeez, we had good putdowns back in the day. Caroline J, Paul Kelly, Jill Baird and Dolge Orlick remembered drongo, dropkick, dipstick, dill and drip, not to mention no-hoper (another horse racing term) and nong. Dag, though, was always friendly, even if it describes a thing that hangs off a sheep’s arse, and much more vivid than doofus, a sweet but limp Americanism. Dickhead lives on but might be threatened by the shorter and harsher dick — another case of compression.
— James Button, The Way We Word, 16 June 2026
***
***
A Matter of Percentages
Ten years ago, when I used to accompany the Italian prime minister on his trips around the world, there was a stupid game that I would play with his spokesman, who was, like me, a big fan of political TV shows. Back then, such series fell into three main categories. The first, which we might describe as heroic, included productions such as The West Wing, which represented politics as a virtuous competition between generally competent and well-intentioned people. The second sort of show was darker, depicting politics as a Hobbesian jungle in which nobody is innocent and the only law is survival. This category included House of Cards, extremely popular among politicians because it portrayed them as brilliant, unscrupulous Machiavellian characters, leading a fascinating life of intrigues and dirty tricks. The third category, on the other hand, which included sitcoms such as The Thick of It and Veep — both created by the great Armando Iannucci — showed political life as it actually is: a perpetual comedy of errors in which the characters, almost always unsuited to the positions they occupy, do their best to muddle along, extricating themselves from a series of unexpected, often absurd and sometimes utterly ridiculous situations.
Filippo and I would attempt to work out what percentage of each day we spent travelling corresponded to these three categories. The result was, generally, about 10 per cent West Wing, 20 per cent House of Cards and 70 per cent Veep. At the time, this made us laugh: it was a way of defusing the tension and fatigue that accumulates in such circumstances. Not only that, but the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, inadvertently joined our game during the 2016 elections, when he campaigned under the slogan ‘Continuity and Change’ almost exactly the same slogan used by the main character for her presidential campaign in season 4 of Veep. ‘We came up with the most meaningless election slogan we could think of’, explained one of the show’s creators.
— Giuliano da Empoli, The Hour of the Predator, pp.13-14
Books
“Books only have two smells. The smell of a new book, which is good, and the smell of an old book, which is even better.”
— Ray Bradbury
TL;DR
“Keep it succinct. We don’t want our leaders to get chapped lips as they read.”
— advice from a government sage
Keir’s Exit
I love Keir Starmer. I know I shouldn’t; I know it’s shameful; I can’t help it. I love all our Prime Ministers. Only once they’ve quit: as long as they’re in office I hate them with a slightly scary intensity. I see a face on TV and it makes me want to crack their skull open with my bare hands, peel the skin like a lychee, suck out the brains, paint my chest in whorls of biological slime, that’ll teach you to not let the income tax band thresholds rise in line with inflation, fucker, that’ll teach you… All I want is this person gone. Sick of that smarmy face and that stupid strangled voice. And then they drag a plywood lectern outside Number 10 for one last series of mostly meaningless honks and suddenly there’s a lump in my throat. Suddenly I’m saying that in a way, poor old Boris Johnson was actually the most left-wing Prime Minister of my lifetime. The power’s gone; all that remains is a human creature, pink and defenceless like a baby bird. It’s hard to watch a person being so utterly humiliated and not feel sorry for them, and the British political system runs on public humiliations. In other countries their leaders get to serve out their terms and leave with dignity, to write their memoirs and name buildings after themselves. Not here. Here, we practice boarding-school sadism as a system of government.
— Sam Kriss, Everyone is Keir Starmer, 25 June 2026
L’heure bleue
In certain latitudes there comes a span of time approaching and following the summer solstice, some weeks in all, when the twilights turn long and blue. This period of the blue nights does not occur in subtropical California, where I lived for much of the time I will be talking about here and where the end of daylight is fast and lost in the blaze of the dropping sun, but it does occur in New York, where I now live. You notice it first as April ends and May begins, a change in the season, not exactly a warming—in fact not at all a warming—yet suddenly summer seems near, a possibility, even a promise. You pass a window, you walk to Central Park, you find yourself swimming in the color blue: the actual light is blue, and over the course of an hour or so this blue deepens, becomes more intense even as it darkens and fades, approximates finally the blue of the glass on a clear day at Chartres, or that of the Cerenkov radiation thrown off by the fuel rods in the pools of nuclear reactors. The French called this time of day “l’heure bleue.” To the English it was “the gloaming.” The very word “gloaming” reverberates, echoes— the gloaming, the glimmer, the glitter, the glisten, the glamour—carrying in its consonants the images of houses shuttering, gardens darkening, grass-lined rivers slipping through the shadows. During the blue nights you think the end of day will never come. As the blue nights draw to a close (and they will, and they do) you experience an actual chill, an apprehension of illness, at the moment you first notice: the blue light is going, the days are already shortening, the summer is gone. This book is called “Blue Nights” because at the time I began it I found my mind turning increasingly to illness, to the end of promise, the dwindling of the days, the inevitability of the fading, the dying of the brightness.
Blue nights are the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but they are also its warning.”
— Joan Didion, Blue Nights
Square
In 1938, Harlem bandleader Cab Calloway realized that white America was obsessed with Black jazz culture, but they didn’t know what the Black musicians were actually saying. So, he published the Hepster’s Dictionary.
It was the first official dictionary ever published by a Black American, and it acted as a guide for Black coolness.
Take the word “Square.” Today, it means someone who is boring or doesn’t like to party. But in the 1930s jazz clubs, it was a profound insult.
Why a square? Because a square has four rigid corners. It can’t roll. It’s boxed in.
When they called someone a “square,” they were describing a person who was trapped within the rigid rules of white America.
A square was someone who blindly follows the establishment and was completely blind to the rigged game.
In his dictionary, Calloway defined a “square” as: “an un-hip person.”
So, what exactly did it mean to be “hip”?
It had nothing to do with being trendy. It was actually a code word that our ancestors used to hide their communications from their captors.
Being “hip” wasn’t about fashion, It was a warning.
— Michael Motley, The Rhythm without the Blues, 25 June 2026
***
Nixon-maxxing
“I think Nixon’s historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, and deservedly so. I joked that if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a twelve-hour news story. The idea that it took down a presidency is crazy.”
— JD Vance, US vice president, 26 June 2026
World Cup 2026
“China’s starting line-up: Ma Ning and Labubu.”
“中国队首发：马宁和拉布布。”
— RealTime Mandarin, #282
like scrubbing your eyeballs with sandpaper
every time one of my “notes” on “substack notes” starts getting attention there are always a bunch of “losers” and “whiners” in the replies complaining that these things are all enormous block paragraphs written entirely in lowercase, and that this is “disrespecting the reader” because it’s “difficult to read.” this platform is home to the most “sauceless pedants” on the internet, and they’re “dead wrong.” in fact, writing enormous block paragraphs entirely in lowercase is the highest form of “respect” i can render you. if you’re reading this, it’s because you’ve been scrolling through mostly mindless dogshit, probably for ages, obliterating away your one and only life in a series of repetitive thumb movements. it is not “respectful” to allow you to keep doing this unobstructed. the only ethical way to engage with any microblogging feed is by making everything you put on there “as” difficult and burdensome to read “as” possible. reading my posts should be like scrubbing your eyeballs with sandpaper. i will keep attacking you until you are free
— Sam Kriss, 27 June 2026
What a tiny part of the boundless abyss of time has been allotted to each of us — and this is soon vanished in eternity; what a tiny part of the universal substance and the universal soul; how tiny in the whole earth the mere clod on which you creep. Reflecting on all this, think nothing important other than active pursuit where your own nature leads and passive acceptance of what universal nature brings.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12.32, trans Martin Hammond
I have found a flaw
“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms … I was shocked.”
— Alan Greenspan, Ayn Rand acolyte and chair of the US Federal Reserve, on the 2008 financial crisis
Signs of the Times
“God Bless President Trump” read a number of handpainted banners we passed after entering North Carolina. Funny was how unnecessary they were. Support for him was in the air, unlike in New England, where Hugh and I had spent the previous nine days. There, I saw a great many yard signs reading, “Resist!”
But resist how? I’d wondered, looking out the window at the picturesque cottages. Do we lie in the middle of the road? Do we not pay our taxes? Somebody tell me what to do.
A week earlier, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, I’d come upon a dozen and a half “No Kings!” protesters whooping and chanting on a downtown street corner. Most were of retirement age and brandished signs at the oncoming traffic. It was hot and muggy, yet one member of their group, a bearded man playing the accordion, wore a fleece-lined winter hat with flaps over his ears. It pained me to admit it, but they looked like kooks, like Tea Party demonstrators during Obama’s first term. Who cast this thing? I caught myself wondering, as they seemed the worst possible advertisement for the Democratic Party: “Join us! We folk-dance!”
As I passed them, I thought back to the early Civil Rights protesters: the well-groomed men in suits and ties, the women in dresses. All of their signs were clearly lettered, likely by professionals, none with crudely drawn penises on them or the word fuck. Just as important, everyone stuck to the previously agreed-upon issues. Go to a protest now, and within seconds you’re looking at the person next to you, thinking, “Globalize the Intifada”? I thought we were here to defend Masterpiece Theater!
— David Sedaris, The writer on his Duolingo obsession
Dick Joke
“Do you like jokes? Tell me a joke.”
I thought of one I’d heard at a book signing in Indiana:
A mother is driving her young son to school one morning when a garbage truck pulls in front of them. As it takes a sharp turn, a dildo flies out from the back and hits the woman’s windshield with a loud thump.
“What was that?” the kid asks. “A … bird,” the woman says.
The kid settles back. “Huh. It’s a wonder it could get off the ground, what with that huge dick.”
— David Sedaris
Mel Brooks at 100
I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I’m one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know.
If presidents can’t do it to their wives, they do it to their countries.
***
***
Post Not
i have typed sooooo many mean (and true) things out about soooo many members of the talentless but connected influencer set and never hit post. they should study my restraint in a lab.
— Caleb Heron, 29 June 2026
***
Namaste Bitches
***
Crabbed Age and Youth
Crabbed Age and Youth
Cannot live together:
Youth is full of pleasance,
Age is full of care;
Youth like summer morn,
Age like winter weather;
Youth like summer brave,
Age like winter bare.
Youth is full of sport,
Age’s breath is short;
Youth is nimble, Age is lame;
Youth is hot and bold,
Age is weak and cold;
Youth is wild, and Age is tame.
Age, I do abhor thee;
Youth, I do adore thee;
O, my Love, my Love is young!
Age, I do defy thee:
O, sweet shepherd, hie thee:
For methinks thou stay’st too long.
— William Shakespeare
***
***
不出戶，知天下；
不窺牖，見天道。
—《道德經》第四十七章