I don't like my name, said Delphine. Nobody likes their own name. I don't like mine. Lauren's nice. They picked a nice name for you.

And ships' games, the songs and shindys, the yarns of murder and ghosts.

Mean while the men of Judah to prevent / The harraſs of thir Land, beſet me round; […]

Over the last eighteen years, America has quietly created an occulted imperium, quite distinct from the sprawling system of military and naval facilities through which America exerts physical force, based not on high politics, but on control of apparently apolitical plumbing facilities.