Trump Wants to Rename Veterans Day (Then Backtracks) & RFK Jr. Doesn't Know What's in Vaccines
May 5, 2025
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: It matters less what you do every day than it brings you joy.
‘Complete Moron’ Trump Announces WWII Victory Day on Wrong Date: This announcement by Trump distills everything that’s wrong with his administration—and with its childish vision of America.
Trump says he ‘could’ bring Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador, but won’t: This interview is the scariest yet because it reveals Trump at his incoherent and contradictory worst.
RFK Jr.’s Bats**t New Conspiracy About ‘Fetus Debris’ in Jabs Exposed: Is it asking too much that our health guardian makes an effort to get his facts right?
What I’m Watching on TV: Étoile, The Four Seasons, and Portrait Artist of the Year are three very different shows but all are worth watching.
Kareem’s Kvetching Korner: The Fantastical Showerhead Executive Order: Another executive order that in reality has no practical effect except to trick his followers.
Kareem’s Video Break: You had me at a corgi on a skateboard.
Kareem’s Sports Moments: Wanna fly? Here’s your chance.
Emma Rawicz & Gwilym Simcock Play “You've Changed”: Dreamy jazz that will change your day—if not your life.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
My biggest daily worries are death and pickleball.
Anonymous
Although this quote may seem obnoxiously frivolous, after a little thought it’s actually quite profound. A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine said this to me jokingly and we both laughed. But when he explained more, I found myself thinking about it a lot over the following days.
He’s in his seventies, so the looming presence of death is never far from his thoughts. Nor mine. Nor most people our age. The helplessness in preventing it mocks our arrogance of thinking we are powerful or important. Sometimes I worry that mine will be a sudden death with no time to say goodbye to my family. Other times, I worry that it will be an extracted death filled with unbearable pain or, worse, I’ll be in a drugged stupor while life leaks slowly from me while my loved ones juggle busy schedules to visit me without me even being aware. Love will be scrubbed away by obligation.
When my friend said his biggest daily worries were death and pickleball, he didn’t mean he had no other worries. He has children. He worries about them. He has a wife. He worries about her. (She also plays pickleball with him.) He has friends and extended family. He worries about them. He has a job. He worries about it. He’s active in his community. He worries about them. He meant that he plays pickleball every day and how he plays is important to him. He likes all the people he plays with.
Yet, because he’s competitive (he’s won several tournaments) he gets frustrated when he plays with someone who makes a lot of mistakes, and he gets frustrated with himself when he makes mistakes. At the same time, he hates that it matters to him because he realizes he’s fortunate to be able to play at all. He berates himself daily for allowing himself to get irritated by a stupid game. It makes him feel childish—as if he’s learned nothing over his seventy-something years. So, for him, each day he plays is a challenge to be more mature and less the kind of person he doesn’t like. It’s a thermometer of his spiritual temperature.
A slight detour here. A recent episode of The Studio was about how a powerful studio head, played by Seth Rogan, accompanies his girlfriend, a doctor, to a gala event with other doctors. The doctors clearly look down on what Rogan does as frivolous compared to what they do and Rogan grows increasingly angry. He tries to explain to them that the arts are as important to people as medicine because both heal people. Then they scoff at him for calling what he does art. But there’s an even bigger picture: The need to categorize anyone’s work as more important is classist, an attempt at self-aggrandizement. There’s no need to dismiss one person’s work—or even their pleasures—as inferior. (Obviously, there are some legal and moral exceptions.) A juggler is as important to the community as a judge.
Pickleball is just a metaphor for doing something pleasurable to fill each day. There’s nothing wrong with expressing passion for something that brings joy. Go ahead, feel frustrated, feel joyous over small things. That’s all life is in the end: Filling days with as much pleasure as possible while avoiding pain. Pleasure may come in the form of helping others, family time, reading, painting, gardening, etc. Or a combination of several things. They are each as important as the other in making today a good or bad day. Don’t berate yourself for getting annoyed over an aphid infestation in your garden or the pre-emptying of your favorite show by a news break featuring a freeway car chase.
Death does not judge our passions, it just sits patiently beside us—waiting. So, don’t judge them either. Celebrate that you still have plenty to be passionate about, whether it’s apple picking, vegetable pickling, or playing pickleball. It’s all the same glorious filling of the day. And it all ends too quickly.