Wednesday ORT: Monza, Charlie Kirk, Guest Tudor Review, Lisa Crook, Irnya Zarutska

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Housekeeping: We have three unpleasant topics for today. (Four, if you’re a Liam Lawson fan.) Please abide by the rules: you’re free to criticize or demean public figures, you’re free to criticize me, but you are required to be courteous to each other.

“Oscar, Lando’s girlfriend just broke up with him. Please also break up with your girlfriend.”

would senna have done it for damon?

I believe history will remember the 2025 Italian GP as the race that assured Oscar Piastri the championship. Which sounds counter-intuitive, since OP literally moved over and allowed Lando Norris to repass him. Hear me out, however: Lando can’t beat Oscar this year. He’s not mentally strong enough, and he has thirty-one points to make up. That’s more than winning a race with a Piastri DNF. In theory, if Lando wins every race and Oscar takes second, that will do it. Anyone want to call their bookie and put that one in?

No, it’s not pace or heart that Oscar needs, but rather the full faith and support of McLaren. He’s the interloper, the foreigner, the younger driver, the late arrival. McLaren, the team, has a demonstrated history of playing favorites to local boys — remember the famous “We were racing Fernando and not Kimi” comment by Ron Dennis? — so Oscar needs to be extra charming in a way that his Spanish predecessor could never quite manage. Following the team orders, immediately, without complaint? That’s charming. It also burnishes Piastri’s legend. What other WDC has voluntarily ceded a position with the championship on the line?

Hell, Max wouldn’t even let Perez by to help his “Minister of Defense” secure second in the 2022 championship, after he had mathematically won the WDC!

Other notes from the race:

• Yuki beats Liam, again! Apparently the Japanese driver had damage to the car for pretty much the entire race. He certainly didn’t look very racey, yielding positions without much defense and falling backwards out of the points. Surely he is dreaming of being demoted to Racing Bulls — but Hadjar, who had the kind of superb drive people are starting to expect from him, will surely be anxious to stay out of the senior seat.

• Sir Lewis had a great race, at least by the modern standards we have set for him, which basically amount to “Try not to let Charles make you look too bad.”

• Does anyone think the Red Bull was actually the fastest entrant at Monza? Of course not. Max Verstappen’s ability to elevate a car is possibly unequaled in modern F1 history. Surely what everyone wants to see is a straight 2021-style title fight between Oscar and Max, without butter-soft Lando and Mr. Saturday, Charles Leclerc, in the way.

• Similarly, George Russell deserves more credit than he is getting. In the past year he’s gone from brilliant-but-flighty to steady-and-secure.

It would be asking too much for the last races of the season to be out-and-out thrilling, but there is some drama to be had. In particular, the team battle for 2nd place between Ferrari, Mercedes, and, uh… Max. Let’s also take a moment to cherish the fact that Williams is a solid “best of the rest” right now. This was a team that, at one point in the recent past, couldn’t even field cars for testing.

Violence turns dialogue to monologue, and all that

Campus martyr, indeed. Charlie Kirk, the inoffensive trad-conservative mouthpiece for Turning Point USA, famous for his “Change my mind” meme, (Edit: that’s Steven Crowder, not Kirk — jb) just died from a shot to the neck during a campus speech. As of this writing, there is not a suspect in custody. While I don’t know who did it, I know why they did it.

This particular headline from The New Republic is one of about a thousand saying the same thing, night and day on repeat. The implications of the media package are obvious:

0. You need to kill Hitler if you ever get the chance.

1. Charlie Kirk is Hitler.

2. How could this have happened?

The irony here is that Kirk was far from an ivory-tower elite prognosticator. He went to campuses because he believed in dialogue with his opponents. Apparently, he was too good at his job.

I’m generally not in the conspiracy-theory business so I won’t go on about “wind-up toys” and whatnot. I will note that this, like the Trump shooting before it, suggests an unpleasant escalation in national politics. What’s the fix? I have no ideas that are both serious and feasible. What we need is a little more maturity on both sides of the political divide, before it becomes a genuine open season on everyone.

Charlie Kirk’s message will now reach more people than it was ever permitted to before, but this will be no solace to his family. I am sure that every pundit and spokesperson to the right of AOC is thinking about whether they really want to keep speaking in public. That’s what the Chinese call “killing the chicken to scare the monkey.”

Finally, someone besides me buying a silly watch

Your humble author was at a Tudor boutique yesterday. You all know that I’m a Grand Seiko loyalist, but there are a few Tudors rattling around the house, including a wacky project that I’m working on featuring the cheapest GMT on sale anywhere in the world and DG’s new Black Bay Burgundy on a Jubilee bracelet. Anyway, I asked about the VCARB watch and the kid just smirked at me.

“Obviously we don’t have that,” he said. But ya know who does have it? Shortest Circuit. Over to you!

“Hi Jack,

I did not expect to see this watch on TV literally the day after I bought it. Good on Isaack Hadjar!¹ The buying experience was pleasant, since I've bought my more valuable watches - all two of them - at a family-owned jewelry in Stuttgart. No need to beg for a reservation, that's not how it's done over here. Kutter are concessionaires for Tudor, not official dealers, so they have been allocated two of the Carbon 25s. Paid list (€7.350.-), got offered drinks and a courtesy airport bottle of black gin and I was out of the door.

First thoughts: the movement is built onto the Breitling B01 sans one complication (the Tudor doesn't have an hour counter), so it works much the same. The chronograph pushers are screw-downs, so no willy-nilly timing here, first you have to break the watertight integrity of the watch; then remember that Breitling officially made the starting motion rather stiff for a column-wheel movement - the stopping and reset are thankfully lighter. The automatic winder reminds of Rolex - it's between the rough ETA 7750 and the buttery smooth Seiko Magic Lever; you hear it work, but don't feel it. The party piece is of course the case that is CNC'd out of a block of forged carbon, giving the watch a dull finish. The look of forged carbon is largely determined by the size of the carbon flakes embedded in it; Tudor evidently chose a flake size you get after putting the material through a coffee grinder. The crown, pushers and the caseback are PVD coated titanium - smart choice of not trusting the inherently inhomogenous case material to hold the delicate threads, also less of a chance of ripping all of the Rolex Oyster-style flutes off of the back at the first servicing.

The dial is also made out of carbon, with a rather thick white opaline coating, a blue seconds track, and the subdials are left raw black. The small seconds runs continuously at 9 o'clock. The 45-minute counter for the chronograph is across at 3. While most other chronographs count 30 or 60 minutes, this one has historical roots — the first Tudor chronograph counted 45 elapsed minutes. In comparison to my other watches, the subdial hands are white but not fluorescent - the bluish Super-Luminova is reserved to the hour markers and main hands. The tip of the chronograph seconds hand and the water resistance indications are red.

The strap is held on by a clever four-pin system, two hold the rubber that's textured to look like scrubbed slicks, and the other pins are holding two forged carbon fillers that mimic the look of the Oyster end-links. I don't really like rubber, so currently it lives on an OD green NATO band, this makes it look smaller and more rugged.

In summary: I like the toolwatch look that's not as detailed as some of the other offerings - you can't do the light-play trick with carbon by brushing one side and polishing the other, so the designers had only the colors to play with. Use of the chronograph requires a bit more attention compared to an Omega that doesn't have screw-downs but uses a combination of gaskets and lip seals to provide water resistance.

I hope it is not as fragile as the Zandvoort trophy was. ²”

Thank you, Shortest Circuit! If you’re an ACF reader who would like to share a rare, interesting, or just fun watch with us, please reach out. In the meantime, look out for an upcoming piece on that most unlikely of timepieces: a quartz Grand Seiko that appreciated after it was discontinued.

The media finally finds a Ukrainian victim they want to forget

After Decarlos Brown stabbed Iryna Zarutska, as she sobbed and shuddered towards death in shocked and decaying incomprehension, as the bugmen and cucks around her pretended to be extra-interested in their phones or the dark windows of their train, he offered a single statement: “Look, I got that white bitch.”

Today, from jail, he was more forthcoming: he believed Zarutska was reading his mind. Obviously, she wasn’t. But you didn’t need to be a mind reader to know that Brown was dangerous. Nor did you need to know that he has been treated with the softest of kid gloves by a criminal-justice system that has released him fourteen separate and distinct times — this last time with the miracle of “cashless bail” that amounts to limitless encouragement towards violence and insanity on the part of the State. You just needed to look at his body language and his behavior. Everyone else on the train knew, which is why they gave him the widest of berths prior to the stabbing. It wasn’t because he was Black. The other people on the train were Black. They didn’t stab anyone. It was because he is insane, and because he has been coddled in that insanity by a system that finds perverse utility in having nightmares like him roaming the streets.

From my colleague Kat Rosenfeld, on “the taboo that killed”:

Then, as now, there was a sense that it was in bad taste—if not outright racist—to acknowledge that men like Brown and Neely are a familiar presence in American urban public spaces, and that this presence is not a good thing. Then, as now, the progressive party line was that it’s “real corny” and “a mark of low moral character” to admit that you are discomfited by encountering people on public transit who behave in ways that telegraph the imminent possibility of violence, or confrontation, or the lower-grade-but-still-unpleasant spectacle of seeing someone evacuate his bowels onto the seat where, but for your instinctive choice to herd your family down the car, your 3-year-old toddler would still have been sitting.

It’s become very popular, and very social-credit-rewarded, for bugmen to bleat online about the “cowardly conservatives” who are “paralyzed by fear” of downtown cities and lawless urban spaces. You’ll hear that the death rates are just as high in rural areas, although you won’t hear much about the differing causes — out here in the township, we don’t have murders, we have head-on collisions across thin ribbons of blind-spotted road. Instead, you’ll get the condescending conclusion that only true “city people” are brave enough to live in the city.

Yet there’s no courage on that train. No one intervenes. No one even tries to help Zarutska after her stabbing. Perhaps a bit of pressure on the wound might have helped. We will never know. Everyone on that train was a bigger coward than the stereotypical “Black Rifle Coffee” jag-off in his lifted truck and surplus combat gear concealed-carrying through a Tractor Supply store. There was no Daniel Penny to subdue the madman then boldly face the combined resources of the world’s most powerful city trying to have him murdered in jail.

Watch her die. She doesn’t understand what is happening. She came from Ukraine to find safety, but in reality Vladimir Putin couldn’t have killed her as surely and heartlessly as Decarlos Brown did. She cries, like a little girl, until she is dead.

Don’t bother hating Decarlos Brown. He is mentally ill, and already lives in the hell reserved for people whose minds actively torture them with illusion. He isn’t even a criminal in the traditional sense of someone who knowingly commits a crime. If you want to hate someone, trying hating the men who knowingly baited Russia into steamrolling Ukraine. (Alternately, you can blame Russia for taking the bait.) You can hate the politicians who, in the name of progressive justice, unleased this insane person on terrified citizens. You can despise the judge who looked into Brown’s eyes and figured he’d be just fine on the street. You can have contempt for the media that made Daniel Penny a household name while looking away from this murder because it didn’t fit a profitable agenda. You can scorn the people who couldn’t even bother to look up after the stabbing.

When all is said and done, however, I’ll lay the blame on every person who, for reasons of self-aggrandizement or group-identity comfort, acted like you’d be a fool to be scared of people like Decarlos Brown in a situation like that. My son and I have been on the NYC subway fifty times or so in the past few years. If I saw that dude near him, I’d move The Commander away to safety.

Iryna Zarutska had been taught by social media, and the media in general, that she would be perfectly safe in the vicinity of Decarlos Brown. So I hold those people responsible. They distorted reality for their own ends.

If you have children, or if you’re a woman, and you’re not ready to scrap to the death with someone like Brown at the drop of a hat, you should maybe think about being one of those suburban or rural cowards. We are out here, hiding in our ridiculous monster trucks, afraid of everyone who doesn’t look like us. The least enlightened white (and brown, and black) trash you’ll ever meet.

And, alas, still alive.

You can’t fire the mortgage lady for a fraudulent mortgage!

Alright. Clown World can be funny as well as scary, and here’s the proof: a judge told Donald Trump that he can’t fire someone from the Federal Reserve just because… they filed two fraudulent mortgages. Jia Cobb, seen below:

made the hilarious argument that the President can only fire a Fed board member for “good reason”. What constitutes “good reason”? Apparently it is not filing for, and receiving, a fraudulent mortgage. Lisa Cook took out a primary mortgage on her second home. Prosecuting this is similar to “the headshot”, but there is literally zero doubt that Cook is guilty. The only question is whether she intended to commit fraud, or — as Cobb apparently suggested — she was unaware of the law.

To me, this is dead simple. If she knew what she was doing, she’s a financial felon and she should be fired from her financial oversight job. If she was too stupid or ignorant to know what she was doing, she shouldn’t be on the Board to begin with. Let’s see what MarketWatch said about her:

Cook has a very impressive résumé. She has held fellowships at both the very conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford and at the Kennedy School at Harvard, and advised both the U.S. and foreign governments. As a graduate student, she won a prestigious Marshall scholarship to Oxford University, where she earned her second bachelor’s degree. She took her doctorate in economics at Berkeley and, before becoming a Fed governor in 2022, taught for many years at Michigan State University.

Either all of these “accomplishments” were given to her for reasons not worth enumerating here, or she actually earned them. Either way, she needs to hit the road. For now, however, let’s take a moment to chuckle at the fact that Trump, for all his supposed dictatorial unlimited fascist power, can’t fire a financial officer for committing financial fraud. The President of the country has less power than the average HR lady at your corporate job, who can and will fire you for “liking” a Tweet.

To a very real degree, this country now belongs to people like Cook and Judge Cobb. The infamous Heartiste would counsel that we all go “poolside” for the rest of history. I’ll suggest instead: love your family, do what’s right as often as you can, hope for the best. Many fulfilling and rewarding lives were lived under the worst of the Roman tyrants, and whether you see tyranny in Orange Man Bad or in the unelected bureaucracy that has the power to ignore him, there will continue to be fulfilling and rewarding lives to be lived in the here and now.

1. https://x.com/RBR_Daily/status/1962216626264109264

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