There are only two conspiracy theories I truly, madly, deeply believe in: that LBJ had JFK killed, and that Gram Parsons wrote “Wild Horses.”
Good haul from Vintage Mio today.
Finished reading: Don’t Call It Art 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again by Austin Kleon. Just a terrific book, I think Austin’s best — and exactly what I need right now as I contemplate a big change in my life a year down the road. This will be my guidebook, or rather my anti-guidebook, since if there’s one lesson everyone should learn from this book it’s how sad it is to know where you’re going. 📚
Jeong Seon (1676-1759), Clearing after rain on Mount Inwang. Ink on paper, Joseon dynasty, 1751.
A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan is a very good biography, but it (inadvertently I think) raises an interesting question. Late in life Schuyler (a) achieved stability of mind and daily life and (b) became a regular churchgoer. The unasked question is whether those two developments were related, and if so, how. 📚
So strange that the Sagrada Familia is nearing completion — unfinishedness seems so integral to its identity. Much larger version of the photo here.
Freeman Dyson (1997):
It often happens that a scientific revolution is accompanied by a change in style. I like to use the names of Napoleon and Tolstoy to symbolize two contrasting styles: rigid organization and discipline represented by Napoleon, creative chaos and freedom represented by Tolstoy. In the world of computers, Napoleon is the massive IBM main-frame; Tolstoy is the humble Macintosh. The computer revolution was an escape from the Napoleonic ambitions of von Neumann to the Tolstoyan anarchy of the Internet. Future revolutions will bring more such escapes.
The big AI companies are the apotheosis — literally, in the view of many who work for them — of Napoleonic science. The open web and the world of hobbyist and small-scale devices (often built on the Raspberry Pi) are our remaining refuges of Tolstoyan computing. See also: Erik Larson reflecting on Dyson in 2022.
