when you travel … you have adventures, to tourists … time is valuable
Adding experiences in Georgia and Virginia and the Carolinas to their knowledge of Florida, the Johnsons saw and drank deep of Savannah, Charleston, Asheville, Richmond, and Newport News.
They were able to do all five cities in six days, while the Bezuzuses had taken eight for them.
In Charleston they saw Calhoun’s grave and learned all about the aristocratic society.
They were so pleasantly entertained there, by a very prominent and successful business acquaintance of Mr. Johnson’s, a Mr. Max Rosenfleisch of New York, who had bought a fine old Southern mansion in Charleston and thus, of course, was right in with all the old families socially.
Mr. Rosenfleisch said he liked the aristocrats, but was going to change a lot of their old-fashioned social ways, and show them how to have a real swell time, with cabarets and theater parties, instead of these slow dances, and teach them to dine at seven instead of three or four.
The Johnsons were quite thrilled at witnessing the start of this social revolution—I tell you, it’s when you travel that you have such unusual adventures.
They themselves would actually have met some of the inner social set of Charleston, but Mr. Rosenfleisch was having the den redecorated before giving any more of his smart, exclusive parties, and meantime the Johnsons had to be getting on—to a tourist, time is valuable.
Adapted from I’m a Stranger Here Myself as reprinted in I’m a Stranger Here Myself and Other Stories by Sinclair Lewis (Dell, New York, 1962).
The split is about where the agent lives, not what it does
Strip away the branding, and Spark and OpenClaw do roughly the same job. Watch an inbox, draft the status update, browse the web, run the recurring task. Both are converging on MCP for tool connectivity, though the implementations differ in maturity. Both promise the assistant who does things rather than answers questions.
The substrate decides who holds your context, who sees your credentials, and who can change the terms later.
The difference is the substrate. OpenClaw runs on the metal you bought. Spark runs on metal Google rents to you and never names. That sounds like a deployment detail. It is actually the whole argument. The substrate decides who holds your context, who sees your credentials, and who can change the terms later.
Convenience usually wins this fight, and Google knows it
The self-hosted version asks for real work. Buy the Mac mini, keep it awake, install a daemon, set up Tailscale, and rotate the key when it expires. The reward is control. Your credentials and workflows can stay under your own hand, depending on how you wire up models and integrations. That control is not the same as safety. A misconfigured local agent with shell, browser, and inbox access is its own hazard, and Chinese regulators have already flagged exactly that risk with OpenClaw.
Spark asks for nothing. It is already inside Gmail, Docs, and Sheets, with no manual wiring, because Google owns both ends. That out-of-the-box reach is the structural advantage no third-party agent can copy. The history here is fairly settled. Dropbox beat the home NAS. Gmail beat the mail server. Managed nearly always beats self-hosted for the median user, because most people will trade control for not having to think about it.
According to his bio on THENEWSTACK, Janakiram MSV (Jani) is a practicing architect, research analyst, and advisor to Silicon Valley startups. He focuses on the convergence of modern infrastructure powered by cloud-native technology and machine intelligence driven by generative AI. Before becoming an entrepreneur, he spent over a decade as a product manager and technology evangelist at Microsoft Corporation and Amazon Web Services. Janakiram regularly writes for Forbes, InfoWorld, and The New Stack, covering the latest from the technology industry. He is an international keynote speaker for internal sales conferences, product launches, and user conferences hosted by technology companies of all sizes. His previous experience includes Microsoft, AWS, Gigaom Research and Alcatel-Lucent.
I have been working in the online world since 1995.
I just read what Mr. Janakiram MSV wrote.
And I want you know, I don’t know what it means either.
At least I think I don’t.
After reading it 4 times, I am afraid a lot of what Mr. Janakiram MSV says seems to start making sense.
So, maybe, I do not think that I do not know what it means.
In a way, I find that just as scary.
But that one line ….
because most people will trade control for not having to think about it.
Somehow I think it reaches a lot more topics than just this one.
disdain for questions about war, no coherent rationale for it
Over the past two and half months, Mr. Trump has ordered thousands of strikes against another country and killed its leader.
The war has roiled global energy markets and drained American munitions stockpiles.
Yet despite its scope and stakes, the president continues to show disdain for members of Congress who ask questions about the war and has not even provided a coherent rationale for it.
Congressional Republicans deserve significant responsibility for the situation. They could and should do much more to constrain him.
Congress could pass a resolution expressing its disapproval of the war and hold hearings investigating it, raising the political pressure on the White House.
It could refuse to confirm nominees or fund Mr. Trump’s military priorities until he adheres to his constitutional duty to work with the legislature.
Otherwise, members of Congress are participating in America’s slide from democracy.
According to the NYT, The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
I am reminded of the author Garrison Keillor who wrote about life in a small town and in discussing the life of one person in this small town, related how the mother of this person would say over and over … why don’t you DO something with your life?
This went on for years.
Then one day, Mom said something different.
Mom asked, why DIDN’T you do something with your life?
This piece isn’t warning that American Democracy could be in trouble.
This piece isn’t warning that American Democracy could be seeing some issues.
This piece pointed out that American Democracy is already in its slide and sliders, if you didn’t know, always take you down.
find a crystal sea ran along with skip jump at random, fancy-free
Always the world has ever been A fairy-land to me. No road was just a common road No tree a common tree.
Each road was an enchanted trail To find a crystal sea I ran along with skip and jump At random, fancy-free.
About each tree-trunk hung a spell Whose pebbles, bits of glass In hidden nests were images To bring my dreams to pass.
I never went a-journeying But that I ended lost, For I sped down the avenue A-flame and fancy-tossed.
Ah me! my life has ever been A fragment from a jest Torn from the tangled web of dreams That gossamer my breast.
Dream Life by Georgia Douglas Johnson as published in The selected works of Georgia Douglas Johnson by Georgia Douglas Johnson (New York: G.K. Hall, 1997).
According to Wikipedia: Georgia Douglas Johnson (September 10, 1880 – May 15, 1966), was an American poet and playwright. She was one of the earliest female African-American playwrights, and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance.
Throughout her life, Johnson wrote 200 poems, 28 plays and 31 short stories. In 1962, she published her last poetry book, entitled Share My World, the poems in which reflect on love towards all people and forgiveness, showing how much wisdom she has gained throughout her entire life.
why do you look for the living among the dead? remember, told you
Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” Then they remembered his words.
Luke 24 (New International Version)
Workshop of Peter Paul Rubens – The Women at Christ’s empty tomb (1640)
