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The Barron Files

Today I learned more about Barron Trump.

I keep a couple files rolling on my devices for notes and this is just me clearing em out for a fresh start. It’s been cold for the last week with a couple days of snow. It’s 22 degrees this morning and we still have some ice on the pond and snow on the ground. This is pretty rare in our region given we hardly had a winter last winter. Regardless, I’ve managed to average 3.3 miles of cycling and 3.4 miles of walking over the last 30 days according to my new wrist tracker. I decided I wanted to be more wholistic in my approach to health so I’m diversifying my excessive portfolio and I can barely keep up with the 60+ aged lady on the Apple fitness yoga routines1. I’ve also started tracking all my food for fun and so that I can learn about my habits more objectively.

I’m pretty sure that walking out in nature is good for me. We recently lost one of the dogs on a walk during the snow who didn’t have his satellite collar on so I went off trail deep into the woods trying to stand silent listening for his location. While I was there I saw a small herd of deer meander on by which just gave me the feeling of a being lucky to have a set of eyes and brain to ponder the moment as a spec of dust in the universe. I also had an opposite but equal moment on the way to one of those walks. Ran the i4 up against a 700hp blackwing2 on the backroads through the early morning fog because I also like a good machine and a little bit of risk. The focus of an intense ride or the quiet or a walk sets my mind at ease, which is exactly where I want it to be.

The something’s gonna kill you attitude provides a little balance to the health and mental health stuff. Even in David Lynch’s3 obituary photo he’s smoking so you know he lived a some sorta dark sublime 50 year suicide via emphysema. I’m still a bit metaphysical on life. In the back of my mind there’s always some sorta mystical fable going on like, if I don’t help this person that’s seemingly taking all of my attention with relatively worthless tasks, they might turn out to be some sorta wise sage further on down the road. I sometimes forget to look for those subtle clues buried in a sea of information.

I’ve been tracking my screen time4 and for whatever reason, perhaps that I didn’t want to see the truth, I’ve as of yet used any of the default screen time or focus features. According to the last week, I’m spending an average of 8 hours and 5 minutes a day on a screen… 13 hours of ‘productivity & finance’, 7 hours of ‘information & reading’ and 6 hours of ‘social’. The one thing I’ve really tried to disconnect from in the last several years is constant information intake. I try desperately to focus more on output than intake. If I’m going to be in front of a monitor or other screen, I might as well get some benefit other than being up to date on the latest news or trending Reddit post. The only thing not monitor is my television and it’s hardly ever on except the occasional movie or our Brit comedy wind-down series, which happens to currently be The League of Gentlemen5. Before that we finished The Completely Made Up Adventures of Dick Turpin6 which has some of the same fellas from People Just Do Nothing and The Mighty Boosh. In my opinion, these are the closest thing to modern Monty Python and I’ve found that this sort of humor is the type of medicine my shrink or doctor should be prescribing.

I have been a little bit more focused on my information intake recently in that I’ll pick a particular person or topic and stay on them for a bit. I think David Brooks’ recent essay How the Ivy League Broke America7 is pretty spot on regarding meritocracy and explaining the rise of dumpy populism. I also did a deep dive on some of the underpinnings of the philosophy behind and the whole technocracy bunch. I was inspired by the fact that Peter Thiel used the word apokálypsis in the title of a recent editorial8. During my reading, I kept running into the Claremont Institute9 which is John Eastman’s club likely from the NYT piece on Curtis Yavin1011. I’ve always kinda wondered how many silicon valley fellas come outa Harvey Mudd, but I never really connected it to the Claremont. Even the recent education gig went to a gal connect to Claremont and I just wonder how, why, and where their ideas were coming from. I won’t bore you with the drivel, but the thing that really stood out is that majority of them are non-religious and our age. I just have a hard time imagining what sort background you’d have to acquire this sorta ’dark enlightenment’12 outlook.

Jake and Elwood on a mission from god to save the orphanage

For the last five or six days I’ve been trying to put myself into the mind of Barron Trump. I think it’s because saw a clip of him with a half hearted expression at the inauguration. I’ve been thinking about and doing the research on a fun little side project called The Barron Files13 - a fictitious account from his perspective. He’s currently 18 so the backstory on it could be that a secret service agent confides in him at an early age that they can see all of his online activity and then teaches him how to keep files hidden. The agent then decides to release them. I wouldn’t organized it like a traditional book... just a set of files with their last save date. I debated using a pen name for it but I think I’ll just publish it online with a disclaimer about it being fiction. I want to humanize his experience and I want the audience to have empathy. If anything, I want him to be the hero but I also want it to be funny but not entirely at his or his families expense. In a way, it’d be a way for me to make light of a serious situation to remind us of the fragility of the human experience.



Footnotes​

  1. Apple Fitness - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitness_(Apple) ↩

  2. Cadillac Black Wing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_twin-turbo_V8 ↩

  3. David Lynch - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lynch ↩

  4. Screen Time - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_time ↩

  5. The League of Gentlemen - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_League_of_Gentlemen ↩

  6. The Completely Made up Adventures of Dick Turpin - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Completely_Made-Up_Adventures_of_Dick_Turpin ↩

  7. How the Ivy League Broke America - The meritocracy isn’t working. We need something new - David Brooks - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/12/meritocracy-college-admissions-social-economic-segregation/680392/ ↩

  8. A Time for Truth and Reconciliation - Trumps return to the White House augurs the apokálypsis of the ancien regime’s secrets - Peter Thiel - https://www.ft.com/content/a46cb128-1f74-4621-ab0b-242a76583105 ↩

  9. Claremont Institute - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claremont_Institute ↩

  10. Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy is Done and Powerful Conservatives are Listening - https://www.nytimes.com/video/podcasts/100000009910862/curtis-yarvin-says-democracy-is-done-powerful-conservatives-are-listening.html ↩

  11. Curtis Yarvin - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin ↩

  12. Dark Enlightenment - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment ↩

  13. The Barron Files - https://thebarronfiles.com ↩