Periodic Digests

“So long as he may allow you, take care of it as a thing which belongs to another, as travellers do with their inn.” — Epictetus, Enchiridion 11 (trans. George Long, 1862) On October 20, 2025, demolition crews began tearing down the White House East Wing, the 1902 addition that had housed the East Garden Room, the Family Theater, and generations of First Ladies’ offices. (NPR) It was coming down to make room for a 90,000-square-foot state ballroom, which the White House said in July 2025 would cost about $200 million, fully covered by Trump himself and other “patriot donors,” at no cost to taxpayers. (PBS) By December the estimate had climbed to $400 million. This week, CNBC reported the figure has reached roughly $900 million, and that it will now be “covered primarily by taxpayers.” (CNBC) ...

“For this is your duty, to act well the part that is given to you; but to select the part, belongs to another.” — Epictetus, Enchiridion 17 (trans. George Long, 1862) Early this morning, the Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as Attorney General of the United States, 50 to 49. Every Democrat voted no. So did two Republicans, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. (NPR) Blanche spent most of his career on the advocate’s side of a courtroom: a decade as a federal prosecutor in New York’s violent crimes unit, then years defending white-collar clients in private practice. In 2023 he took on a single, high-profile assignment: representing Donald Trump personally, in the hush money trial, the classified documents case, and the election obstruction case. (Wikipedia) That’s not a dishonorable job on its own. The system depends on lawyers willing to argue a client’s case as hard as it can honestly be argued, whether the client is popular or not, guilty or not. ...

Stoic Saturday: When the Law Becomes a Suggestion Think clearly. Live intentionally. Love deeply. The Rule of Law Isn’t a Spectator Sport Marcus Aurelius wrote that “the best revenge is not to be like your enemy.” Today, that enemy isn’t just a person—it’s the slow rot of a system that once held power in check. The rule of law isn’t a given. It’s a daily practice, like flossing or not eating the entire pizza in one sitting. And right now, it’s being treated like a suggestion rather than a rule. ...

“Some things are in our own power, and others in the power of others.” — Epictetus, Enchiridion 1 (trans. George Long, 1862) I’ve been following the campaign around Crimea closely these past few weeks, and something about the shape of it has stuck with me: not the politics of it, which I’ll leave to people better qualified than a Stoicism newsletter, but the strategy. For a long time, the instinct, mine included, was to imagine this kind of war ending the way wars end in movies: one decisive battle, a line on a map that moves all at once, a single dramatic turn. That’s not what’s happening. What’s happening, by most independent accounts, is slower and less cinematic than that. Ukraine appears to have shifted its approach around Crimea from scattered strikes to something more sustained and methodical: degrading fuel depots, air defense, bridges, and rail lines, and increasingly, ships. Reporting from the Crimea Platform and United24 put the numbers in the range of ninety to over a hundred Russian vessels struck in single-week windows in early-to-mid July, Kerch Strait ferry capacity down as much as 75%, and passage through the Don-Azov Canal temporarily suspended. Officials in the Ukrainian defense establishment reportedly describe the goal plainly: make Crimea an island. Not take it back in an afternoon. Isolate it, patiently, until what’s left is unsustainable. ...

“Let each thing you do, say, or intend be the act of one who might depart from life this very moment.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.11, in Long’s rendering: “Since it is possible that thou mayest depart from life this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly.” (trans. George Long, 1862). The wording above is a modern paraphrase, not a translation. Memorial Day is a strange holiday. We grill. We shop. We go to the lake. We treat it like summer’s opening ceremony. And somewhere in the background (a parade, a flag, a moment of silence) we remember that the whole thing exists because people died. ...

Subject: The Pause “You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (paraphrase — no translation contains this wording; the genuine 4.18 in Long’s rendering is “How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only to what he does himself”) (Long, 1862) There’s a moment between stimulus and response where everything lives. ...

🪞 A Reflection The clearest high point of 2025 was finally giving my writing the honesty it had been waiting for. I stopped circling the truth and began trusting it. Pages that had stalled for years moved once I allowed myself to write without self-protection or apology. Writing became less about producing and more about listening—staying present long enough for the right sentences to surface. Much of that work is finding its way into Misaligned, a book I plan to publish on June 10, 2026, shaped by questions I’ve carried for decades. The year didn’t resolve my story, but it helped me tell it more truthfully. ...

🪞 A Reflection “Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test.” — Ingersoll, said of Lincoln (“Abraham Lincoln: A Lecture,” 1895) Attribution note: this line is routinely credited to Lincoln, but it does not appear anywhere in his writings or speeches. It is a compression of Robert G. Ingersoll’s tribute to him: “Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test.” “Abraham Lincoln: A Lecture” (1895). ...

🪞 A Reflection “Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking.” “Science is a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility.” — Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, ch. 2, and Charlie Rose, 27 May 1996 Source note: the two clauses above are real Sagan, but they come from two different sources and had been joined into one quotation. The first is from The Demon-Haunted World*, ch. 2; the second from Sagan’s final* Charlie Rose interview (27 May 1996), reprinted in Conversations with Carl Sagan (2006). Neither source contains the other’s clause. ...

🌎 Reflection: The Contributions of Invasive Humans Last Monday was Indigenous Peoples Day, which means we once again pretended that reflection counts as redemption. Politicians tweeted something solemn, schools trotted out platitudes, and by early Tuesday we were back to bulldozing what was left. History books call it exploration. The truth is simpler: invasion with better PR. We arrived, took what wasn’t ours, renamed everything, and congratulated ourselves for our courage. The native peoples gave us corn, medicine, and balance. We gave them disease, treaties written in disappearing ink, and a few casinos to make the math look fair. ...