So much going on in the garden right now I can’t keep it all in focus.
Wow, more than a third of the 100 best novels of all time were written in my lifetime, almost all of them in English. I guess we’re just a lot better at writing novels than non-Anglos and all those mediocrities who preceded us (Balzac, for instance).
Many people have already written about the chatbot-generated phishing scams directed at writers: We love your writing and can’t wait to promote your book etc. But what surprises me is how many of them there are. I get them almost every day now. Fortunately, it didn’t take long for spam filters to figure them out … which is interesting in itself. Such messages are unlike typical spam in most respects, so what gives them away?
Frank Hughes, A Somerset Farm (c. 1930)
Speaking of being ahead of the curve: there’s a new book on what’s wrong with the whole “cultural Marxism” discourse, but I showed what’s wrong with it in this 2018 blog post.
in Breaking Bread with the Dead I have a riff on R. A. Lafferty’s 1965 story “Slow Tuesday Night” — which, in light of this report by Charlie Warzel, puts me ahead of the curve and puts Lafferty waaaaaay ahead of the curve.
The Unofficial Angus Fan Club has been vocal lately, so here you go, guys.
