...Anni Aurei

("Of the Golden Ages") 

Everyone's doing their Best Of...lists.  Here's some of my picks, throwing in a few Latin words (as we follow blindly down ancient Rome's path toward dissolution): 

Word (nomen) - brainworm. 

There have been multiple mots thrown out there on the wall, Time Magazine-style.  The most ridiculous I heard was the first one, "demure", from Dictionary.org, but really from some influencer who misuses it all the time to the point that it has become standard English, like the varied usages from "literally", "precipice", "leafy", and "vibrant".  In this case, I wouldn't know, maybe it trended strongly; but, do we have to celebrate it? 

Oxford went with "brain rot'.  I don't know, was this their translation of RFKJr's former malady, or are they still being haunted by the prions of mad cow disease?  

The Economist dragged it out in their essay, but finally went with "kakistocracy", the rule by the incompetent.  They remain indignant at the lack of good government.  I think "idiocracy" will surely be nominated by someone; that movie made a big comeback this year as it seemed to signal a logical endpoint for all our society's worst trends toward, yes, incompetency, performative politics, big piles of shit, etc.  I think what we're getting so far is just the first part, "Id-cracy", rule through the id of an idiot.  But that's just temporary; we could still avoid full idiocracy with  more education of the populace and a little less nihilistic "don't give a shit" attitude. .

Returning to my main point, I am still going with the Kennedy reject as my personal focal point of dissatisfaction with this year's version of the multiverse.  (see "Lathe of Heaven", below)  There must be some other place where the Kennedy heritage is destined to end up,  other than kneeling at the foot of  Drumpf, then playing the Fool in spreading some widespread, avoidable avalanche of a health catastrophe.  In my outlier thesis, it's his fault that Harris lost.  This is altogether too weird.

Film - (cacumen) 

For me, it will be "Dune, Part Two", though it was released too early to be a significant Oscars contender.  I thought it lived up to my expectations, which were high.  I think one additional episode should be enough from Mr. Villeneuve, who has now topped The Mexicans (take your pick of the big 3) as top international film director.  A year or so for him to get perspective on how to handle all the the many successive novels and the gist of them, but some of it can be speed-walked.  Particularly the part about the Dominant Worm ("God Emperor"). A little more "Chapterhouse of Dune", the backstory that is behind the streaming serial "Dune: Prophecy"(not impressed) might help the understanding.  Anyway...

I'm eager to see the early Dylan biopic with Timothee Chalamet ("A Complete Unknown").  I'd have to guess he may be Best Actor in the Oscars, and this is surely Angelina Jolie's chance to win Best Actress for her portrayal of Maria Callas (in "Maria"), unless she messed it up entirely.  I'm not considering any of these post-Thanksgiving entries, though;  they can be on my Film of the Year list for 2025, if they are good enough.

I'd say "Lee", Kate Winslet's WWII vehicle, and "Conclave", the story of a fictional election of a Catholic Pope, are movies that were released in good time and had some good points ("Lee" was an unheralded true story, "Conclave" had good use of foreign languages in the Vatican's polyglot environment, fine roles for Ralph Fiennes, Isabella Rossellini, and Italian Sergio Castellitto), but did not reach paradigm-shifting excellence.  One that went for it was "Anora", the tragicomic sex flick of a stripper and a Russian oligarch's wayward son.  It has the same crazy energy as two recent international triumphs, "Parasite" and "Everything, Everywhere, All at Once" but I think it falls short in terms of social significance.   

As for the season's two big blockbusters, I haven't seen "Wicked", but I will do so though it's not my cup of witches' brew, and "Gladiator II" does not interest me--I love historical fiction but this is an unhistorical one. 

Song (canticum) -

 I've read a few of these top 2024 songs lists--rarely one of albums anymore, though they are still made.  These lists have a lot of stuff representing our fractured "popular" musical environment, while I only hear a couple of the genres (rock, indie). I will try to take some listening suggestions from them--YouTube is so easy, if you don't mind a few commercials.  These Best Of.. unanimously name Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us" as #1. Yes, it's odious, but so are we all--I guess. 

The one I'd go with is Karen O, with Danger Mouse, on "Super Breath".  I think it's 2024, anyway.  Karen O's re-emergence as a powerful, controlled vocalist of renown in recent years was late but welcome, and D.M. gives her a suitable, classic backing instrumental line.  Yes, the breakthrough album for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs was in 2022.

Book (librum) -

 Again, I've read a few of these lists, and there is one name always on the list (some respectfully refuse to rank within the top 5 or 10).  That is "James", by Percival Everett, taking the Huckleberry Finn story from the other side, that is, Jim's.  I have to try that one. Mostly I have read Yuval Noah Harari this year and some sci-fi, and I regret little of it.  The late Ursula LeGuin still entices my reading--she wrote so much, so well.  A re-reading of her "Lathe of Heaven" (1971) was revealing in what she anticipated of our future world, and it got me thinking more about dreams, an underappreciated aspect of our lives.  Anticipating a lot of free time to read in the near future, I do have a powerful list going forward.

Person  (persona)

 TIME came out with theirs before I, to my temporary embarrassment. I was going to critique their list, which had some interesting names, along with the unnecessary repeat candidates (Trump, Musk, Putin).  Of their list, I would strongly support Yulia Navalnya . It said she was previously a candidate, but did Alexei ever win? If not him, not Nemtsov before him, TIME has let history down.  My pick: Alvin Bragg - he is the Buster Douglas (of Mike Tyson fame) of Donald Trump challengers, the one who won.  It may not have been the "World's Biggest" prize of all time, but he did it and 2024 was the year. (Biden already got his in 2020, with Harris alongside).

Athlete (athleta) - 

 I saw that one of the sports mags named women's basketballer Caitlin Clark as Sportsperson of the Year, and I respect that choice for the huge impression she has made this year for the sport.  I would go with Stephen Curry, for a career of great NBA success, somehow exceeded by his amazing series of three-pointers in the desperate fourth-quarter comeback against Nikola Jokic and Serbia in the semifinal game of the 2024 Olympics.  Meaningful, and memorable.  Second choice would be for Freddie Freeman, for a similar career of success topped off by a remarkable game-winning homer for the Dodgers in Game 1 of the Series.

Food  (cibus) - 

 This is the Golden Age of Global Food.  I think a lot of the international shipment of food items will tail off due to increased price, climate change considerations, and more blights of food products.   Coffee and avocados are two products we can expect to become more scarce, much more expensive.  Forget about those lousy unripe Chilean fruits we see in the market.  My pick is a domestic product--Talenti gelato and sorbetto, which captures the essence of Italian high-end iced product and packs it tightly in nearly unopenable jars and sells it for $5-6 a pint--high-end price also, but well worth it.  The man credited with putting it on the market, Dean Phillips, ran a quixotic campaign in '24 to replace "too old" Joe Biden. He didn't get far, but he planted the idea that blossomed out of control after Biden's debate with Trump.

Lots of links I could have added--go find the lists yourselves if you want.  I gave you my choices.  Latin translations by Google translate, which isn't too swift on the Latin.  Not enough current data for the AI learning machine, I'd say.

Developments

About the UHC CEO Assassination

As US assassins go, Luigi Mangione seems more intelligent than the others; in particular, he can articulate his thoughts.*  Some ladies seem to find him attractive.  If I were the authorities in PA and NY, I wouldn't rush the extradition, but rather bring forward the gun charges for which he was arrested--those are a slam dunk. I don't doubt that Alvin Bragg (my choice for Person of the Year, over Dickhead 2.0) will eventually get some kind of conviction in Manhattan, too, but going for the maximum might be a reach too far.  Mangione should have access to good lawyers and will have some kind of painful story to tell that might work to some extent. 

What I really want to talk about, though, is United Healthcare.  Yes, I'm a customer, I think--it's just Medicare's Part D, it costs little and currently provides comparably little benefit but whatever. Mangione is way off-base if he was pissed that he couldn't get all the treatment he wanted; that's such a First-World problem.  There is rationing of healthcare in all systems.  On the other hand, if it was the insurers who made his pain worse because they induced him to get sub-standard care--the result of which didn't look so hot on that X-ray associated with his back--then he had some beef with them.  But a gangsta approach does no one any good.  And, frankly, he was more Bernie Goetz+ than Unabomber material, but he might do well on the witness stand.

There's a real, enduring problem with our healthcare system, and it's called the profit motive of the middlemen involved.  UHC is probably the worst offender, though statistics can be biased easily depending on what is measured.  They are sucking the value out of the whole process with their relentless pursuit of more money.  They need to be more like--gasp!--utilities, with profit levels basically guaranteed but limited, strict measurement of reliability of customer treatment, and some mandatory regulatory oversight.  In fact, they should be utilities, full stop. We don't have to go all the way to eliminate them as profit-making enterprises, which was the real mistake of the Medicare for All movement.  The pharma/insurance lobby got its back up.  Not to mention all the jobs.

Trump's Cabinet and Other Nonentities

I don't get too worked up about the fate of the crappy nominees Trump has chosen, even for his Cabinet Secretary positions.  For the most part, anyway:  I do think RFKJr is the one who must be stopped, and I think his non-conforming policy positions on some subjects (not vaccines, but more like on corn oil, abortion pills, etc.) could end up sinking his chances with enough Republicans to deny him.

The ones like Gabbard or Hegseth, if they get the votes, it won't change things all that much.  There are overly well-developed organizations beneath them that will go around them, if they are too flaky. And can you imagine a Cabinet meeting of the clowns?  On the one hand, it would be a joke--a bad one--and wouldn't be a good use of time.  On the other, though, it would flatter POTUS--it better--so he might want to have more of them this time around. The betting notion would be the over/under on the number of Trump Cabinet meetings Rubio attends.  Preliminary line: 3.    

I don't mean to minimize the damage Trump will do, but he's got four years--two, really. This joke will get old, while still young.  And by "joke" I mean "scam". 

Playoffs:  College and NBA

I give some credit to the NCAA planners who have come up with a viable expansion of their college playoffs, which they roll out this year.  They are going from 4 teams (the critical cut happening at the #4/5 ranked team) to 12 teams (as it happens, that will be a cut from #10/11).  There is still not a great deal of satisfaction, particularly from the SEC, though their teams muddied up the waters by beating each other up somewhat randomly in the big games. Alabama is the team that gets gored this year, #11.  Seems strange, but Alabama did lose three games in its regular season.   

The correct answer is 14, as in 14 teams in the playoffs.  Two conference champions deserve byes, the SEC and the "Big Ten"+.  (The other two teams getting the byes were bad jokes I won't recite.) Those are the only two conferences that matter, and all the best football programs are migrating to them if they can. (Except Notre Dame, of course--they are special.)   Anyway, with 14 teams in the mix, the two losers from the conference championships get home field vs. #13 and #14, then the other eight teams play in neutral bowl locations and are seeded #5-#12.   That is where they will likely go before too long.  They are learning the lessons from the NCAA's other marquee event, the basketball championships (now both men's and women's), which have maximized participation to great effect. 

The NBA has hedged completely that critical cut by making two of them, one more absolute and the other more real.  Every competitive team's goal has to be to get into at least the top 6 of their conference, though 10 teams make the postseason in some form.  Teams 7-10 still have a shot in brief playoffs, though they will be disadvantaged.  It's a good design.  

They also seem to have done well, so far anyway, with their new early-season event the NBA Cup, now progressing through its second season.  It's created enthusiasm and the players have mostly bought in.  The result has been a lot of close, meaningful games with near-playoff atmosphere.  It's only the second season, though; the relationship between NBA Cup success and success in the real thing, the playoffs, has yet to be demonstrated convincingly.  The Lakers did win the Cup and reach the conference finals, though, last year; the latter was a surprise.  The Oklahoma City Thunder are the top team left in the final four, judging by regular season record; they will also likely be favorites in the playoffs, along with the Celtics, who did not make the final four, in the East. .

 

*So to speak. I thank Ken Klippenstein for printing the manifesto in its entirety in his Substack, which the big boys chose not to do, though they selected quotes to support their hot takes. 

+ I will seek to refer to all college conference names other than the SEC in shock quotes, to draw attention to their transparent greed-seeking behavior. And because their names are such lies. Repeatedly.