“His lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing, although it would not work for me.”
(Bill Gates on Jeffrey Epstein)
According to his spokesman, Bill Gates was referring to Epstein’s décor. That reminds me, I need to vacuum the cat hair from my lifestyle.
When he dismissed blowback as “an inverted pyramid of piffle,” Great Britain’s former Conservative MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip proved there’ll always be an England ruled by a class of person able to toss off a Bullingdon clubbable sneer. Americans can only dream of such abuse.
“After the Trump era is over, much will be said about the lasting damage it has done to civic discourse. In addition to other reforms and acts of reconciliation, repairs will need to be made to the ways we engage in public argumentation and decision-making…”
(Aubrey Clayton)
Lately I realize that Clayton’s tweaks to civic discourse would address the sour gas issuing from America’s bowel while ignoring the infection. A broadly based reconciliation with factuality and truth-telling would be medicinal. Less is gluing bullfeathers on a jackass.
What ultimately makes Mr. Epstein a significant figure is not his personal pathology but what his career says about the culture that found him useful.
(Jacob Weisberg)
Causes, not symptoms. What makes our debased discourse significant is not its meanness but what it says about a culture that elects mean leaders.
The dread of war is not enough. If you don’t want the effect, do something to remove the causes. There is no use loving the cause and fearing the effect, and being surprised when the effect inevitably follows the cause.
(Thomas Merton, The Seven-Storey Mountain)
Merton, a Trappist monk, took it to the divine place, saying the cause of wars is “sin.” He might have been on to something! If I can think of “sin” as “crime” I’m good. Wealth inequality is a sin. Citizens United is a sin. Algorithmic predation is a sin. Monopolies are a sin. Capital punishment is a sin. The list goes on. The wars go on.
(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
We See Colors With Our Tongues
A poster Mr. Widmer designed in 1975 for an exhibition at the Center for Industrial Creation in Paris. He was known for his restraint, Paula Scher of Pentagram said: “He was never over the top.” Credit… Jean Widmer. [New York Times caption and illustration]
This is my favorite poster ’til further notice. I see yellow, orange, red, violet, blue, green. What do you see?
Jean Widmer was born Hans Ulrich Widmer on March 31, 1929, in Frauenfeld, Switzerland, to Emil Widmer, a master mechanic in a factory, and Anna (Rageth) Widmer. His father, he once told an interviewer, worried about his penchant for drawing.
(Adam Nossiter, “Jean Widmer, Designer of Celebrated French Graphics, Dies at 96,” (New York Times, 2-26-26)
(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved