Alan Jacobs


Reading

All

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: In ev’ry government, though terrors reign, Though tyrant kings, or tyrant laws restrain, How …

: The estimable and always thoughtful A. M. Juster reviews The Shield of Achilles. I am grateful for …

: Based on that new post of mine, my friend Rick Gibson is having a t-shirt made up for me.

: My one comment about the election — or rather the discourse surrounding the election — requires me …

: Mushrooms, drawn by Beatrix Potter

: My Substack account has gotten completely out of control, and I can best deal with that by deleting …

: My thoughts on Nicholas Jenkins’s magnificent new book on Auden, The Island, are in the new …

: Craig Mod – AKA @craidmod.com: Where am I typing these words? I’m sitting in a tiny café on …

: Here I am, as usual, trying to get us to be clear about what questions we’re asking.

: A distinction that it took me a very long time to learn: what I need to write versus what I need to …

: Marian Evans (George Eliot), from a letter to Charles Bray in 1859: I have had heart-cutting …

: Mary Delany, paper mosaic. Ca. 1775

: A decade ago, I wrote an essay about what seemed to me a strange development: the centrality of …

: Gold sword-scabbard button with garnets, Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, early AD 600s

: On my big blog as a Mathom-house.

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: I’m always negotiating the relationship between micro.blog and my big blog, but I’m getting closer …

: I despise Man City, but Rodri’s Ballon d’Or is absolutely deserved. He’s been the …

: Nick Heer: “If software is judged by the difference between what it is actually capable of …

: I wrote about Court and Spark, an album in its fiftieth year.

: At the galleys stage of my biography of Paradise Lost — an exciting moment because I don’t …

: I wrote about articulateness — and the lack thereof — in American Presidents and Presidential …

: Nick Cave: I experience a certain vague ‘spiritualness’ within the world’s chaos, an approximate …

: Listening to: Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles 🎵

: How to hibernate

: Researchers say AI transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one ever said. And some of …

: Adam Roberts has a Substack! This should be cause for general rejoicing, and everyone should …

: Maybe this is a good season for me to re-up my old post on being informed but not absorbed.

: The atlas of drowned towns

: Gecophone crystal detector radio set no. 1, complete with instruction handbook, around 1923

: In the middle of Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett, I came across a funny/insightful passage I thought …

: A very happy boy after playing in the hose.

: Sometimes teaching — or the kind of teaching I do, anyway — forces you to confront certain dramatic …

: I’m delighted that Davide Mascioli, who had first thought of the Space Exploration Logo …

: Truthless. I am psyched. I would be under any circumstances but especially because of my long career …

: My question for those who make an economic defense of the liberal arts is always this: If the …

: Bruce Herman, “Meditation” 

: I’m going to spend some time with my first-years today discussing the skill of critical …

: At this stage of a campaign season, journalism consists largely of frantically shouting at people …

: Freddie: There’s no major topic in American media that’s covered with less openness to new …

: In which I prove to be over-trustful in news reports.

: At Padre Island National Seashore you can drive on the beach — if you have a 4-wheel drive vehicle, …

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: Via this post from Sara Hendren — AKA @ablerism — I see that I need to read Dougald Hine. One …

: So here I am praising David Brooks for … thinking some of the things I think, I guess. But I …

: The response by Gemma M. (whom I don’t know) at my most recent BMAC post is fascinating to me, …

: Mark 7:34. I should get points for biblical literacy instead of being rejected.

: Dots

: dozing

: Hotel labels!

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: Perfect pairing in the mail today.

: Here in Waco, from 5pm this afternoon to 9am tomorrow morning the temperature will drop fifty …

: Kieran Healy on his Modern Plain Text Computing class: To help address these challenges, modern …

: Phil Christman: I was curious about students’ causal arguments about this sudden eclipse of …

: This Met exhibition on Sienese painting looks wonderful.

: M. John Harrison: The middle aged — that is, those between about thirty five and fifty years old — …

: So a few minutes into the train wreck of the Biden-Trump debate James Carville turned off the TV, …

: Whenever I am tempted to think that all those years I spent on social media were wasted, something …

: Nicholas Carr: It would be foolish to suggest that dead speech will supplant living speech in all …

: Richard Rorty’s bastard children.

: Mandy Brown wrote a wonderful post that I responded to, and now she’s back with an even better …

: Brad East asks “What does an idol promise?” — and then answers the question. A useful …

: It has never occurred to me that someone meeting a philosopher might ask “What are your …

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: There’s no way I’ll be watching Megalopolis, but the broader point Matt Zoller Seitz …

: There’s a lot of this.

: Meaghan Ritchey does a fascinating interview of Nicholas Ma, whose new documentary Leap of Faith …

: Baylor is having an A.I. week and I’m not super happy about it.

: Angus would like you to know that he is two years old today!

: John Naughton on Dave Winer: Like many of us, he realised that what came to be known as the …

: My primary problem as a guitarist: by the time I have achieved, or am on the verge of achieving, …

: The moon.

: Kevin Williamson: There are public housing projects nearby, whose residents complain the local …

: I’m very excited about Ian Leslie’s forthcoming John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs, …

: Angus meekly and gratefully received his blessing.

: I wrote about writing for money and writing for no money.

: David Karpf: Maybe someday Altman’s ideas about AI will prove out, but for now, his approach is …

: From the same story, Oliver at his desk with notebook fountain pen typewriter PC with WordPerfect …

: Oliver Sacks’s notes on Tourette’s syndrome

: Teaching The Nine Tailors to 16 first-year students and they are into it. I am rather shocked by …

: I like to visit the corner of our department where we keep office supplies, which I adore. Pencils, …

: A powerful and much-needed word from Sara Hendren, AKA @ablerism: I think the clamor among young …

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: You’ll never hear a better version of “Amazing Grace” than this. Indirectly via …

: Why I’m not blogging much these days.

: My friend and colleague David Corey told me that this is how he explains to his students how musical …

: Yeah, sure, y’all keep looking stuff up on the “internet,” I’ll just be over here with my REFERENCE …

: It seems, my dear friend, that the brains of the greatest men contract when they are gathered …

: I approve of the design and typography of this poster.

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: Decades ago I started porting my Desires and Preferences to my Reason, but WOW are there still a …

: Real talk: The best version of Rhapsody in Blue is the arrangement for piano, especially as played …

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: Currently reading: Passions of the Soul by Rowan Williams. This book is exactly what I need right …

: Ove at the Hog Blog, I wrote about how Montesquieu teaches us the value of triangulation. (That may …

: The primary work of the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop is letter cutting in stone, and you …

: Stone carving by the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop for Clare College, Cambridge.

: TIL (from John McWhorter) that long ago the opposite of business or busyness was busiless.

: Lord Peter meets Colonel Mustard.

: Justin Smith-Ruiu: And little by little I began to wake up to the fact that I am, like everyone …

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: Dominic Armato: “Content Creator” is a title that inadvertently tells on itself. It’s a tacit …

: Josh Gluckstein’s cardboard coral reef

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: Two consecutive stories in my RSS feed. Turns out that if culture is being lost it’s also …

: Another fascinating report on trends in American religion by Ruth Graham, the best religion reporter …

: Why my model is POS, not POSSE.

: Mexican prints at the Met Fifth Avenue 

: Listening to the readings in church this morning, I couldn’t help thinking that the epistle …

: Eric Fitch Daglish, from Birds of the British Isles (1948)

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: Finished reading: France on Trial by Julian Jackson. A vivid and powerful story. What a unique …

: I wrote an update for my Buy Me a Coffee supporters.

: Ronald W. Dworkin: The crisis that doctors face in their new working environment is ultimately a …

: Fidelia Bridges, Rooftops, Brooklyn, ca. 1867

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: Everett L. Warner, New York from a Seaplane, ca. 1919

: Brad Bigelow: The canon of well-known classics, the books one can find in just about every library …

: I linked to this before, I think, but I continue to listen obsessively to Alec Goldfarb’s new …

: Robin Sloan: My writing project continues, of course. What is that project? The production of books …

: Michael Chabon: I find the continuing mission of Voyager 1 so moving, for the way its name alone …

: Waneella

: Very glad to see that Francesca Gino’s bullying lawsuit against the Data Colada bloggers has been …

: Dan Cohen: A copyright regime that precludes libraries lending scans of books they already own and …

: This report on defamation law reminds me that I wrote an essay on the intellectual and moral history …

: Zadie Smith: “I think it’s important to be a bit more forgiving when they’re being those …

: “Hello, Public Safety? There’s some dude outside my office window, just sitting there and staring …

: Today Robert Caro’s The Power Broker is available as an e-book, and I would love to know how …

: Adam Roberts, “Musée des Prole Arts.”

: I LOL’d while reading this post by Phil Christman because it captures so perfectly a certain moment …

: I wrote this morning about the world’s best copy editor and offered your occasional reminder …

: Christine Rosen’s new book The Extinction of Experience — which I blurbed — is here also, and …

: Jeff Bilbro’s new book Words for Conviviality — which I blurbed — is just out, and …

: Hi! I’m back!

: I’ll be back!

: Looking at what the next few weeks hold for me 😬 I realize that I need to take a break from …

: I just keep coming back to this one. 🎵

: People love Big Stories, sweeping narratives that seek to describe the whole world or the last …

: I wrote about William Blake’s sleeping giant.

: Ted Gioia on the healing power — literally! — of music.

: Rachmaninoff in Sydney — a report from one of my students.

: I wrote up My Correct Views on Theological Diversity – the title being a nod-and-wink in the …

: You probably have not heard of Mildred Pope, but I bet you’ll be glad to learn about her.

: When I’m writing my back would very much prefer that I do it while reclining in a comfy chair, but …

: Feels good to cross the 10K barrier. (Working on my Sayers bio.)

: Initial letters. 

: Via Damon Krukowski, a reminder that even a basic calendar of events could be a work of art if you …

: Here’s a new post for my BMAC supporters​.

: If you slip the cover art out of the plastic box that holds the Criterion edition of Perfect Days​ …

: China depicted by a 17th-century English artist – at the V&A.

: Very interesting observation from Ethan Iverson: Ross Barkan and Freddie deBoer are prolific on …

: Breaking news: VAR in the Premier League continues to be worse than useless. ⚽️

: I wrote about Adam Roberts’s novel Space Satan!!! — that’s the title Adam’s son prefers and I can’t …

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: I find that I’m not at all ready for the return of (European) footy, not after the Euros and …

: I wrote about Sherlock Holmes and Jacques Derrida. As one does.

: My all-time favorite edition of Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files is this one, about an unfortunate …

: Had dinner at Red Herring tonight and the cacio e pepe was, if not to die for, certainly to kill …

: It finally arrived!

: Pochettino: the only football manager on the planet who can look at the USMNT job and think: Well, …

: Chelsea FC: Finally fulfilling its God-given role as a feeder club for American soccer managers. ⚽️ 

: Oh cool, it’s Emo Dorothy Sayers.

: Via Ethan Iverson, Vinnie Sperrazza gives us the backbeats.

: Plan de l’exposition universelle de 1900. Full-size image here.

: just before I lost that finger

: First the Crush commercial and now this: Apple seems to have decided that the enemy they must …

: This article on the essential Shel Slverstein omits what I believe to be his masterpiece: Uncle …

: I wrote about something I call the diaconal charism. 

: I wrote about anarchism as a spiritual discipline.

: Writers at their desks 

: Thesis: the first album — as a coherent work of art, not merely a collection of songs — was Frank …

: The thing I love about sports is the way it can bring the world’s top political powers together. 

: USA men’s 🏀, gold medal game, shooting in the last 3 minutes: Curry made 3 Durant made 2 FT Curry …

: I’m really touched by Robin’s kind words here. (Also, what a great newsletter issue.) 

: So Emma Hayes leads the (formerly quite broken) USWNT to a gold medal and all the Brit footy …

: This new post by Chris Arnade — faithful chronicler of forgotten America — is harrowing. And I come …

: Tradescant’s Orchard (Bodleian Library) 

: What a cool idea from Leah Libresco Sargeant: “I’d like to write a Chrome extension that delays …

: I am aware that microtonal jazz-blues might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I love the new Alec …

: I have no idea why, but I have received dramatically more fan mail — that is, messages of …

: I wrote about colonialist owls.

: update on domain issues I still don’t have my domain issues ironed out, but (a) I am beginning to have some hope of …

: I love how for the Times southern Ohio and western Nebraska are both (waves hand) “the …

: There are several annoying errors in this piece, but let me single out one: the claim that Tolkien …

: RE: this list, I am chiefly a bibliophile but also a bibliologue. 

: Joshua Amirthasingh

: Part of the CBS Television Studio in New York (1978) from the Eyes of a Generation Viewseum

: Plate made in Kütahya, Turkey (1718) in the Jameel Gallery, V&A

: security Since It’s All About Me, when I read this and this about new security features coming in Mac OS …

: Thanks to a bunch of people for kind and sympathetic words about my current technical issues. While …

: On the possible end of my big blog, and my difficulties in getting the help I need to keep it alive. …

: Angus strangely interested in Marvin Gaye. Well, I guess it’s not that strange, considering how cool …

: bookshelves Douglas Anderson, a Tolkien scholar, recently reported seeing one of his books on a shelf in a TV …

: Angus says hello!

: I wrote about how modern identity was effectively created by the Great War.

: My dear friend Charles Marsh’s book God’s Long Summer has just been re-released as a …

: Department of Putting the Best Possible Spin on a Situation: high-jumper Gianmarco Tamberi of Italy, …

: the state and the people A few years ago I published an essay called “Miss Marple and the Problem of Modern Identity,” in …

: The other day I sang the praises of USWNT defender Naomi Girma, whom I’ve been watching with delight …

: Whenever they cut to the beach volleyball at the Paris Olympics, I shout, “Sous les Pavés, la …

: “Your friend, Wendell”

: David French’s interview with Justice Neil Gorsuch is great.

: St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Lindsay, Texas.

: WSJ: OpenAI has a method to reliably detect when someone uses ChatGPT to write an essay or research …

: I wrote about styles of acting and styles of being.

: styles of acting, styles of being One of my favorite YouTubers is Thomas Flight, who makes videos about movies. In a recent video, he …

: Currently listening: Danish String Quartet, Last Leaf. One of my most-listened-to records of the …

: I do not have the time to be as into these Olympics as I am.

: My new favorite athlete is Australian high-jumper Nicola Olyslagers, who before every jump looks …

: I’ve been listening to Stephen Fry reading the Sherlock Holmes canon and it’s just irresistible. 🎧📚

: L. M. Sacasas: “My contention, then, is that when we are confronted with the opportunity to …

: crisis! For many years I’ve been writing posts for my big blog using the excellent Mac app MarsEdit, but …

: The final (I think) post of my series on the battle for Guadalcanal is up. Here are links to each: …

: One of the lighter moments from the best and most important day of my life, forty-four years ago …

: Guadalcanal: 6 Around the rim of the shield Hephaestus made for Achilles is the Ocean River, the great water that …

: In a pinch, I could live here.

: Spotify and “corporation-centered design."

: If you want a year’s worth of ideas to explore, just read the most recent issue of Sam …

: Ah. The emails are coming.

: Naomi Girma is the William Saliba of the USWNT. ⚽️

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: Re: this David French column on why what Christians do matters more they what they (claim to) …

: Guadalcanal, Terrence Malick, Emerson, Horace.

: Guadalcanal: 5 If, as I said in my previous post, to confront another soldier in war is to confront yourself, then …

: Recent listening: Ralph Vaughan Williams’s wondrous Fifth Symphony. ♫

: That admirable journal Current has posted its own list of the 100 best books of the 21st century so …

: The excellent folks at Reclaim Hosting are doing an upgrade today that is not supposed to affect …

: The story of the Nisei linguists — who served in the Second World War as translators, interpreters, …

: Umbrella

: Craig Mod on Tokyo: “The saving grace is that Tokyo has a distinct advantage over other cities …

: My multi- and super-talented friend Catherine Woodiwiss, who’s always doing something …

: One of my retirement dreams is to get skilled enough at web design to do with my site something half …

: My series of posts on the battle for Guadalcanal, and artistic representations thereof, has reached …

: Guadalcanal: 4 As I noted in my previous post, the peculiar nature of the Guadalcanal campaign creates a kind of …

: Harry R. Lewis: “Today’s AI-giddy techno-optimists and techno-pessimists might heed Henri …

: Rachel Haywire: “The fediverse is boring! The trade-off for the freedom that the fediverse …

: A fantastic post by Sara Hendren — AKA @ablerism — on how universities ought to, but do not, signal …

: This meditation by Ryan Burge on the closing of the church where he has been a pastor for many years …

: A while back I noted that some enthusiastic recent writing about the great Guy Davenport …

: Barath Raghavan and Bruce Schneier: The [CrowdStrike] catastrophe is yet another reminder of how …

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: Guadalcanal, part 3.

: pre-dawn

: Guadalcanal: 3 The above is a drawing by Howard Brodie, an artist James Jones much admired. The distinctive way the …

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: Google’s search deal with Reddit is yet another of the thousand ways in which the open web is …

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: I’m reading Robert Richardson’s biography of William James and I’m struggling: almost every male …

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: Here is the second in a series of posts about the battle for Guadalcanal and some artistic responses …

: Guadalcanal: 2 How vividly did the Guadalcanal campaign impress itself on the American imagination? Well, this …

: rainy morning in the canyon

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: For the Princeton University Press Ideas blog, I wrote about my critical edition of Auden’s …

: Guadalcanal: 1 From December of 1941 through the middle of the next year, the Japanese Army and Navy enjoyed an …

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: victimology I’ve been meaning for some time to write a brief post about Freddie deBoer’s case for forcing …

: On the rise of detective fiction.

: the rise of detective fiction In The Long Week-End, their entertaining, sardonic, and often insightful social history of England …

: Mark Bristol’s storyboards for Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line.

: On renewing the art of biological taxonomy: “With genetic sequences, we can now identify the …

: Anthony Lane on a new book about SF movies released in the summer of 1982: Such is Nashawaty’s …

: On Hume’s characters.

: Hume's characters In the Oxford English Dictionary, definition II.12.a. of “character” is: “A description, …

: One thing Substack has done very well (from their perspective, that is): Get people who write on …

: Paul Kingsnorth says “everything is myth,” which is true, but if you want to understand …

: Can’t get enough typography analysis.

: “Informed but Not Absorbed” is my new post for my Buy Me a Coffee supporters.

: On Hume’s History of England and methodological naturalism.

: Hume puts his cards on the table I mentioned in an earlier post Hume’s purpose in writing this history — or what anyway I believe to …

: The price of liberty from squirrels is eternal vigilance.

: Wonderful meal tonight at Segovia Wine Bar — a tiny family-owned place in downtown Waco. If …

: Charlie Warzel: I put that question — why should people trust you? — to the pair at the end of my …

: Matt Milliner: “Never trust an image — or a savior — without wounds.”

: Escaramuza charra sounds, and looks, amazing.

: On Hume’s History of England as literature.

: Hume and literature As previously indicated, I will eventually return to Moonbound, but I need to think some things …

: I love seeing that this style of SF cover art — so familiar to me from the paperbacks of my 1970s …

: political proverbs Nothing good ever comes from indulging the egos of old men. Nothing good comes from indulging the …

: And perhaps the most contemporary of all, this 1931 portrait of Kay Francis, who, though largely …

: But Steichen could also do more casual portraits, as in this wonderful shot of G. B. Shaw — an early …

: Sometimes he would use this formal-but-not-theatrical mode for Hollywood stars, as in this portrait …

: And here’s Thomas Mann.

: For literary figures, Steichen would stage his portraits formally, but not theatrically. …

: Or this one of Gloria Swanson. (“Mr. de Mille … I’m ready for my closeup!")

: Or this one of Charlie Chaplin.

: But Steichen is most famous for his portraits, some of which are theatrically staged, almost a …

: If I had to name the greatest photographer of all time, I’d say Henri Cartier-Bresson. But …

: I updated my post on England’s non-football. ⚽️

: Best use ever of the dramatically overplayed “Mr. Brightside”?

: All praise to Sir Ollie of Torquay!! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿⚽️

: Here in the second half against 🇳🇱, 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 has gone back to non-football. The announcers are …

: In the Dictionary of National Biography, Davidson is identified as “Church of England …

: Sometimes you come across people whose stories you think simply must be made up — but aren’t. Ladies …

: This young fella struggled a bit last year, but our rainy late spring has done wonders for him.

: un-football Barney Ronay: Even England, this England’s version of hole-in-the-head football will give you …

: pointillisme

: Jim Groom: “The archaeology of knowledge on the web over the last 25 years is dominated by the …

: When I first read Robin Sloan’s Moonbound, in galleys, I wasn’t, for several reasons, in …

: Moonbound revisited A while back I said that I had read Robin Sloan’s new novel Moonbound and hoped to read it again. …

: I’ve been reading David Hume’s massive History of England, and here’s my first …

: the arc of Hume's history I’ve been reading David Hume’s massive and magnificent History of England, and it’s generally …

: human voices My friend Rick Gibson makes a fascinating argument here. You need to read the whole thing, but a …

: Currently reading: History of England (6 volumes) by David Hume 📚

: Will Baude: The court is motivated by statesmanship, which the country sorely needs today. The …

: I’ve written a kind of mini-manifesto explaining how I’m trying to re-humanize myself, and maybe …

: Steven Heller on typographic New York City 

: re-humanization A couple of years ago I wrote about a shift in my writerly focus from a decade-long inquiry into the …

: “To be interested in ‘the future’ is a symptom of demoralization and debility.” — T. S. Eliot, 1927 

: donkey work John Gregory Dunne, from The Studio:  The Studio was simplicity itself to write. It was mainly a …

: Ted Gioia: “When I first came to Silicon Valley at age 17, the two leading technologists in the …

: I wrote about Fritz Lang’s movie Man Hunt. 

: Man Hunt (1941) In theory, Fritz Lang’s Man Hunt faced the same problem that many other Hollywood films of the same …

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: Still some wildflowers down here in the Hill Country.

: writing time

: On CR7 and his demons. ⚽️ 

: on the edge Above you see what I believe was the key moment in today’s match between Portugal and Slovenia. …

: Siena Cathedral. (Test post.) 

: Very glad to see the NYT printing a lengthy obituary of the great Kinky Friedman, though they …

: I deleted my big-blog post on today’s big SCOTUS ruling. I think I have a useful point, but …

: Just a gentle reminder of a point I’ve often made: if you read the actual text of Supreme …

: “What lies have I ever told? There is no need for lying, seeing that mankind are such fools …

: “Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying.” — Thomas Jefferson, letter …

: supple and athletic minds Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas (1871): A new theory of literary composition for imaginative works …

: Sometimes I think that the best writing set-up I ever had was 30 years ago when I had a PowerBook …

: Will Republicans Save the Humanities? Jenna Silber Storey and Benjamin Storey: At public colleges in red and purple states like Arizona, …

: Philip Jenkins, who recently wrote so kindly about The Shield of Achilles, has noted how cursory is …

: Just sent this to my friend Adam Roberts.

: Harsh, but not wrong

: The great baptismal font at the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta in Siena has been restored.

: My colleague Philip Jenkins has written a lovely commendation of my edition of Auden’s The …

: Experimenting with B&W film (llford HP5 Plus 400).

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: Finished reading: Charmed Lives by Michael Korda. One of the most remarkable memoirs I’ve ever …

: Another Trollope post: the counterpart to Lady Arabella.

: counterparts More Trollopean spoilers here.  One of Trollope’s more interesting habits as a novelist is the …

: “The Title I have chosen for this Treatise, is a Reproach universally thrown on this Island by …

: After watching Ukraine-Belgium, I’m thinking that the malaise afflcting England — the English …

: I wrote about Trollope’s bluntness re: money.

: money is magic Spoilers ahead, but come on, you know how books like this end. Trollope’s Doctor Thorne is the …

: VAR check in the Brazil- Costa Rica match is taking so long that I’ve just turned the match …

: Cloud.

: I wrote about waiting for people to realize that they’re just eating grass.

: when you're ready to stop eating grass This is a kind of follow-up to my previous post, in which I described this blog as a venue for …

: Finished reading: Vows by Cheryl Mendelson. A remarkable book! I wrote some thoughts here. 📚

: what love wants to say Cheryl Mendelson is a philosopher, a lawyer, a novelist, and the author of a legendary book about …

: Recently bought at auction [CLARIFICATION: But not by me!]

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: Fascinating: in China, bookstore book placement as political protest.

: A little post on God’s unconditional love.

: unconditional love Clare Sestanovich:  I sat across from the missionary, pretending to drink a beer. I was new to beer, …

: I am interested in the Texas v. New Mexico case because I am fascinated by the perennial shortage of …

: IANAL, but I am fascinated by legal arguments, and will sometimes read and annotate SCOTUS opinions, …

: A stop-motion animation version of Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi? Yes, please. Please, please, …

: I wrote about how to be a non-infantile observer of the Supreme Court.

: a numbers game The Supreme Court of the United States has been busy this week (notes this SCOTUS-watcher, whose …

: It’s Lagerstroemia season here in central Texas.

: the uncanny valley of blogging I used to call my blog Snakes & Ladders, because that reflected my belief that culture – …

: I’m telling you, this kind of thing wouldn’t happen if Gareth Southgate were alive. ⚽️

: Owen Hargreaves, commenting for Fox, was in a lather about England’s passivity even before the …

: I wake up every morning with a song in my head. I never know what it’s going to be, maybe …

: And then there’s too lo-fi … I don’t know what I took this with. My beloved on …

: On Mount Seymour in North Vancouver, 2004. My old Sony Cybershot photos have a certain lo-fi charm, …

: Cathedral Grove, Vancouver Island, 2006; you almost expect to see a therapod from the Jurassic …

: The Backrooms: Origins

: Grown-up Angus is a handsome fellow.

: From Melissa Price’s Monarchy Book 2023.

: I’ve written about the history and future of commissioning – i.e., getting someone or …

: Freddie: “We don’t have a communal sense of entitlement to healthcare in this country; we do have …

: a parable In 1969, when the Beatles were recording the album that became Abbey Road, Paul McCartney would come …

: I love Austin Kleon’s edge indexes.

: I end my new essay on “the mythical method” with a section on the great Nigerian writer …

: Soyinka and the mythical method I have an essay in the new issue of Harper’s called “Yesterday’s Men: The Death of the Mythical …

: My Harper’s essay on the rise and fall of the “mythical method” is now live!

: I wrote about Thomas of London.

: Thomas of London The inchoate and incomplete “theology of the city” that I wrote about last week has always, is my …

: Paramount Pictures studio, back in the day 

: Wondertooneel der Nature

: Nina Jordan, Untitled, Flooded Home V, 2021

: I gave a couple of chatbots a list of movies with dates and asked them to organize the list in …

: Well, the Euros were shaping up to be a great tournament until England took the pitch. That was dire …

: Currently reading: The Studio by John Gregory Dunne. This little book has a hundred great stories …

: more on beauty Ted Gioia: Ortega y Gasset’s entire essay [on “The Dehumanization of Art”] is brilliant, and should …

: Zach Rausch: “This is the challenge of our time: How do we balance the desire to give kids …

: Why I’m gonna read Moonbound again.

: Why am I shooting film again, after so many years? In part because of what Craig Mod says here: We …

: starting over Around a month ago, I mentioned that I had just read and really enjoyed Robin Sloan’s novel …

: Shooting on film — with a Nikon F100 — for the first time in many years. The natural bokeh is great, …

: Here’s a long post, with many links, explaining how I’ve sorta-kinda-in-a-way written a …

: the wanderers and the city My earlier posts in this series (which began by reading Genesis but has since expanded) are: …

:

: Also, here’s Robin explaining in a video the language/script/typeface he developed for his …

: Surprising moment from this interview with Robin Sloan: [Gibson-Faulkner] Theory is, of course, the …

: George Lois’s library — in his apartment in the West Village — is my kind of workspace. And …

: An outstanding post by Mike Sacasas about technology and work — the kinds of work we value and the …

: I wrote about character in the Pentateuch.

: Damascening

: character The book of Genesis features a large number of distinct and memorable characters: Adam and Eve, …

: Portishead’s Dummy is equidistant in time from (a) now and (b) A Hard Day’s Night.

: My pledge: I will never ever read an article about “How AI will change X” — no matter what X is.

: What a great post by Sara Hendren AKA @ablerism : “When my teenagers play patiently and …

: A friend sent me this extraordinary music video by RAYE — please do watch the whole thing. …

: I wrote a June update for my Buy Me a Coffee supporters. I’m very grateful for those …

: I made a little outline of the Pentateuch — and explained why it matters that such an outline is so …

: Early Anglo-Saxon shoulder clasp

: the Pentateuch in brief outline Prologue to the whole: The Creation (Genesis 1)  The history of humanity (Genesis 2–11)  Making and …

: Urgent insistence that I stop reading and play.

: After watching that shameful display by the USMNT today, I would like to remind everyone that Jürgen …

: Live oak.

: excerpt from my journal I want to write a post about why my "Cosmotechnics" essay ended up being a dead end for me. Though I …

: Rose.

: A vital point by Zeynep Tufekci: “Misinformation is not something that can be overcome solely …

: What if writing papers and grading papers are bullshit jobs?

: automating bullshit jobs Me, a year ago: Of course universities are going to outsource commentary on essays to AI — just as …

: A sobering post from Rory Smith: “There is no obvious route back to smooth sailing for the …

: A new post on Genesis.

: Genesis: the country and the city Raymond Williams, in his great The Country and the City, shows how ancient this contrast is, and how …

: New boilerplate terms & conditions for every tech company in the world: “We reserve the …

: Ted Gioia: “When I recently revisited Rick Beato’s studio for our interview, I noted that he …

: The Premier League loves VAR. Why don’t they care about fan frustration? Because neither …

: A woven Book of Hours

: Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist I: “So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which …

: Wood engraving by R. P. Hale

: Currently reading: The Debate on the Constitution. Reading through these documents, so brilliantly …

: I can never quite get over magnolias.

: Charlie Stross on Microsoft Recall: “But this is an utter privacy shit-show. Victims of …

: Robin Sloan on his love for stories that give you checklists. Don’t forget to pre-order his …

: Genesis: fertility.

: I’ve twice updated my post on highbrow/middlebrow/lowbrow, first with a further thought of my …

: Genesis: fertility If the defining axes of Genesis 1–11 were making/naming and commanding/disobeying, those of the …

: Damon Krukowski: “As a creator who requires more than zero for my content, I seem to be part …

: The first of a few posts on Genesis.

: Genesis: orientation The story begins with creation, and creation is largely a matter of dividing: dividing the region of …

: Angus, enjoying the return of the air conditioning. (As you would, were you a longhaired dog living …

:

: I decree this Take Your Dog To Work Day, because (a) it’s Sunday and there’s no one else …

: Adam Roberts: “If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well, and that counts double if a …

: We’ve been 36 hours without electricity, and as the temp climbs towards 90 I am getting frayed about …

: Since Elon Musk talks a lot about Iain Banks’s novels about the Culture, I am forced to …

: Kim Hong-Joo

: Genesis I was disappointed by Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis, though that may have less to do with the …

: App-based authentication assumes that you have your phone at hand always. But I don’t and …

: Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic, by Tabitha Stanmore, looks interesting. I wrote my …

: clichés, yes or no Amanda Montell: Since the moment I learned about the concept of the “thought-terminating cliche” …

: Mandy Brown, inspired by Deb Chachra’s brilliant new book: “Optimization presumes a kind of …

: In the last few weeks, all of my weather apps have gone haywire, including ones with multiple …

: Yes, authentication service, this is my device — just as it was when you asked me 45 minutes ago.

: Freddie DeBoer: “For a very large swath of the human population, probably the majority, …

: I wrote about Carol Reed’s 1947 movie Odd Man Out.

: William Deresiewicz: “The notion, floated now in certain quarters, that students and parents …

: Odd Man Out Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out is a brilliant movie about … well, that’s the question. Some people say …

: Thinking about thinking like Ruskin.

: Ruskin revisited What follows is a kind of sequel to the introduction to Ruskin I published several years ago. Ruskin …

:

: I’ve been reading the story of David in 1 and 2 Samuel, and in this history there is a character …

: Scott Alexander: “So the question — which I don’t see anyone on either side asking in a really …

: Here’s Adam Roberts critiquing my annotations of Auden’s “Winds” – and …

: Journeys Early in Terrence Malick’s masterpiece A Hidden Life (2019), Franz Jägerstätter and his wife …

: Preview of a possible (but not certain) coming attraction….

: The Calm Tech Institute

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: If it keeps raining our live oaks may end up festooned with Spanish moss, like the ones in …

: Google’s new ad campaign: “Sure, our search results have been getting worse and worse, but they …

: In which I recall an ancient and petty resentment.

: a petty resentment My paternal grandfather, Elisha Creel Jacobs, was for many years an engineer on the Frisco railroad. …

: My old friend Matt Milliner interviews my former student Amanda Iglesias about church architecture. …

: Filling out some marketing questions for my biography of Paradise Lost. They want some potential …

: If Tuchel ends up at Man Utd — the drama queen of managers at the drama queen of clubs — I will be …

: I wrote about editing and the lack thereof.

: The cook as dragon-slayer.

: editing A couple of years ago, I decided that I wanted to re-read Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night, …

: Carl Montford

: Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the new part-owner running the show at Manchester United, is ending remote work …

:

: I wrote about building an attention cottage, literal or metaphorical.

: the attention cottage In the last few days I have come across, or had sent to me, anguished cries from people who have …

: Angus is very content after playing in the garden hose.

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: Peer review in academic publishing can be frustrating, especially when frivolous scholars take the …

: A post on why I’m not going to ditch Apple although part of me really wants to.

: crushed again Two of the best things I’ve read in response to the horrific “Crush” commercial Apple recently put …

: This photograph faithfully represents the moment when I haven’t had my coffee yet but Angus is …

: I wrote something about the students-can’t-read-any-more discourse.

: accountability So here’s yet another story on how students today can’t or won’t read:  Theresa MacPhail is a …

: Looks like I convinced at least one person to try micro.blog: Brad East – AKA @bradeast.org. …

: What an amazing post by Adam Roberts, on Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” …

: Staffage.

: From John Ruskin's Fors Clavigera, Letter 7: You are to do good work, whether you live or die. It …

: last words From Evelyn Waugh’s biography of Ronald Knox: For three days he lay in a coma, but once Lady Eldon …

: Yousuf Karsh’s portraits deserve their great fame, and one of my favorites is this one, of …

: Phil Foden shouldn’t have gotten the Player of the Year trophy because he’s neither the …

:

: Every year I re-read at least one of John Ruskin’s books, and I’ve just gone through The …

: Ruskin on Color The perception of colour is a gift just as definitely granted to one person, and denied to another, …

: Musa al-Gharbi: “Universities in general, and elite schools in particular, exist largely to …

: I believe every man in a Christian kingdom ought to be equally well educated. But I would have it …

: Ian Paul: “When I became an Anglican (from a background of a different church tradition), I …

: The great Shannon Mattern on cardboard boxes.

: I wrote about a forthcoming essay of mine — and (more important) about a forthcoming novel that …

: Mark Hurst: I have to give Apple credit here: the video is boldly telling us the truth. Other …

: the archetypal future Next month I have an essay coming out in Harper’s called “Yesterday’s Men: The Death of the Mythical …

: Auden’s The Shield of Achilles gets a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly.

: temporary storage Drafts is a fantastic app, so well-designed, so capable, so powerful. For my money it’s the best …

: try not to think Fraudulent academic papers are on the rise, and will continue to be on the rise as long as academics …

: I always like to remind people that the real, legal, birth-certificate name of Blossom Dearie was …

: Austin Kleon’s great newsletter edition on the objects we love and live with reminds me that …

: Japanese commercial art

: The most Arsenal thing ever would be for Spurs to beat Man City today and then Arsenal lose to …

: This by Rob Chapman is one of a zillion videos encouraging me to ask whether I’m a beginner, …

: I wrote about Perfect Days.

: A Dissertation on the Clowns and Fools of Shakspeare

: By the way, if I could belong to one of the London livery companies, I would certainly choose the …

: If you happen to be a Freeman or Freewoman of the City of London, then you may exercise your ancient …

: Perfect Days The Richard Brody review of Perfect Days is a tone-deaf review by the most reliably tone-deaf …

: “The secret of good cursing lies in cadence, emphasis, and and antiphony. The basic themes are …

: I’m old enough to remember when I could say “Hey Siri, play [X]” and get the song I asked for.

: Christian Spirituality: categories The Great Texts program here at Baylor, where I teach about half my classes, begins its course of …

: ‘Interior of Tintern Abbey, Monmouthshire’, watercolour by J. M. W. Turner, 1794

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: intrinsic values Adam Kirsch: In his poem “Little Gidding,” written during World War II, T. S. Eliot wrote that the …

: Apple may just have created the most tone-deaf advertisement in the history of advertising. I think …

: Dan Kois: Most alarmingly, kids in third and fourth grade are beginning to stop reading for fun. …

: R.I.P. Steve Albini — a wonder of a recording engineer who had a simple and clear and unshakable …

: Saemoonan Church, South Korea

: Early Cycladic figures

: Me, a couple of years ago, stating a thesis that I’m still committed to: “In any given …

: Laura Brown, The Great Lakes of North America

: back to the brows After reading various writings about the brows — including, first of all, this unsent letter by …

: Book Objects

: I just posted a new letter to my BMAC supporters.

: Playing this morning: Khruangbin’s A LA SALA. ♫

: This from Austin Kleon is great: One of the reasons I didn’t connect with writer Nicholson Baker’s …

: It’s pub day for my critical edition of Auden’s The Shield of Achilles!

: Our new bee attractor.

: Doug Stowe: “My proposal … was as follows: Start with the basic elements from Greek …

: elegance personified (really) Last night Teri and I watched Swing Time, and afterwards played a little game: We went back to the …

: Hebrew illuminated manuscripts from the Italian Renaissance

: Portraits of 28 Japanese metal artists

: On two novels that describe scientific/scholarly integrity – or the lack thereof.

: the integrity of science I haven’t forgotten about middlebrow matters, but right now my mind is on something else. Something …

: A good introduction to the Mondragón model. We desperately need a version of this somewhere in the …

: Related: the Uncovering Roman Carlisle site is fascinating.

: Apparently the place for relics of Roman Britain is the Carlisle Cricket Club.

: P.S.A. A number of people have asked me for my thoughts about the current university campus protests. I …

: And finally, the Rio Grande as it emerges from the Santa Elena Canyon (whose walls reach 1500 feet …

: The previous photo was of the Chisos Mountains in the center of the park; this one of the Rio Grande …

:

: This photo from Big Bend made me think about some of my own photos of the park, for instance this …

: refuge Bryan Garsten:  Liberal societies, I want to suggest, are those that offer refuge from the very …

: I call my big blog the Homebound Symphony – for reasons explained here – but what does …

: A lovely video of my buddy Jon Guerra, in a clearing above Laity Lodge, singing about Jesus.

: attention please Nathan Heller: “Attention as a category isn’t that salient for younger folks,” Jac Mullen, a writer …

: This is the last day of my Great Texts in Christian Spirituality class, and I’m having my …

: brows illustrated Russell Lynes’s 1949 essay for Harper’s, “Highbrow, Lowbrow, Middlebrow” — about which I’ll have …

: I wrote about Dorothy L. Sayers as a middlebrow writer – in future posts I’ll be …

: Sayers the middlebrow writer Robert Graves and Alan Hodge, in The Lost Week-End (1940), their generally fascinating and …

:

: Leah Libresco Sargeant: “The struggles of much bigger tech companies to make their AI …

: St. Mark's Place The Five Spot, on St. Mark’s Place in Manhattan, hosted most of the great jazz musicians of …

: Finished reading: Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard. Teaching this today. It is, every time I read it, …

: Finished reading: 3 Shades of Blue by James Kaplan. A brilliant book, but in its later stages …

: Read this by Ted Gioia in conjunction with my everyone knows post. Twenty years from now, nobody …

: more rational choices My recent posts on how I choose what fiction to read and what’s going on with the publishing …

: Old Japanese train tickets

: Brent Nongbri on Candida Moss’s recent work: “Overall, this book has an effect that is …

: If I’m irritible over the next few days, it’s because Apple’s forced reset of my …

: This award-winning building … is a glass cuboid. The world’s ten billionth glass …

: What happened to Michael Tsai also happened to me today. Annoying as heck. All my Apple devices are …

: Re: this list of sites that prohibit your linking to anything but their home page — I wonder how it …

: Like almost every other writer in America, I’ve weighed in on that Elle Griffin …

: advancing Elle Griffin seems to have carved out a niche for herself telling hard truths to would-be writers – …

: Taken in SE Colorado, March 2023.

: Live webcam at Valles Caldera, New Mexico. The webcam is cool but it’s one of those places …

: Reading this because it’s discussed, with considerable energy, in Sayers’s Gaudy Night. …

: This morning I wrote my most boring post ever! It’s about citations of a literary critic.

: influence and citation I have an essay coming out in the July issue of Harper’s which I titled “The Mythical Method” but …

: UW-M Special Collections – one of my favorite Tumblrs.

: more on costs and choices Isaiah Berlin, “The Originality of Machiavelli”: The ideals of Christianity are charity, mercy, …

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:

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: Matt Crawford, on Substack: Probing his riding companions, Robert [Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of …

: I wrote about how I decide what literary fiction not to read.

: rational choices The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; but that is the way to bet.  — …

: I just love type in cases.

: The Guardian: “As people get older, they revise the age they consider to be old …

: Currently reading: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. I wrote a post about returning to this great book. …

: Gilead revisited The way we speak and think of the Puritans seems to me a serviceable model for important aspects of …

: costs A brief follow-up to this post from last week: In our current climate of political assholery, no …

: Me: I just spilled hot coffee all over my chest! My son: Oh no! Is the coffee okay??

: I wrote an extremely spoilery post about Gene Wolfe’s strange novel Peace.

: Peace, Peace N.B. This post is spoilerful.  A few years ago I read a fascinating post by my colleague Philip …

: The OED has just added 23 Japanese words, mainly involving food and entertainment.

: High is Adam Roberts in his thriller mode. Think: Mission: Impossible on Mars. Brilliant. So much …

: Oleander is enthusiastic.

: I wrote a post on how anarchic childhoods can make more politically mature adults.

: Waxahatchee’s new album is great.

: adult children I think there’s a strong causal relationship between (a) the overly structured lives of children …

: The Internet’s New Favorite Philosopher | The New Yorker: Maret is part of a growing coterie of …

: Wystan and Erika The couple above are W. H. Auden and Erika Mann. The photo was taken by a student at The Downs …

: Audrey Hepburn taking guitar lessons — so she can play as she sings “Moon River.”

: Someone asked me today about my micro.blog avatar, which is one of Paul Klee’s hand puppets, …

: More stuff of mine related to that essay on “rewilding the internet”: I’ve written …

: Me on rewilding the internet plus having a home on the open web — and note that micro.blog is part …

: rewilding The essay by Maria Farrell and Robin Berjon on “Rewilding the Internet” is absolutely essential — …

: Daniel Parris: “A New York Times analysis of Spotify data revealed that our most-played songs …

: The story of the Doves Type

: Nadine Chahine: “A typeface is a series of conversations happening simultaneously between …

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:

: Trying to get a pic of one of our roses, I am confronted by a photobomber

: Start your weekend on a good note: listen to Sweet Honey in the Rock sing “Run Molly …

: Butterflies and bees 🐝

:

: From Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker essay on Maigret

: People sometimes respond to my essay on anarchism by calling me a libertarian. But — to give a very …

: Good to hear that txt.fyi will be coming back. It was the best way to post chunks of text that you …

: I wrote about R. K. Narayan’s marvelous Malgudi.

: Narayan's Malgudi In his newsletter today, my buddy Austin Kleon mentions in passing the Hindu concept of the ashramas …

: One of the first reviewers of Tolkien’s Silmarillion was Richard Adams, of Watership Down …

: Everyone knows.

: everyone knows Reading this Jessica Grose piece — so similar to ten thousand other reports made in recent years — …

: I posted an update for my Buy Me a Coffee supporters.

: Sydney Railway map, 1939

: I love to see this terrific profile of Khruangbin, one of my favorite current bands, but I miss the …

: I’m reading Nicholas Jenkins’s The Island: War and Belonging in Auden’s England — …

: The last eclipse: “The last total solar eclipse will occur when the largest-looking moon just …

: The eclipse as seen from a weather satellite (time-lapse photo).

: I’m sorta digging these slightly wrong pictures. (“Wrong” in the sense that I …

: The eclipse, partial right now, is overwhelming my camera sensor, but this photo still looks kinda …

: A justly famous image from Black Narcissus

: I wrote about The Pilgrim’s Progress and maps thereof. This should perhaps be read in …

: to be a pilgrim I’ve been teaching The Pilgrim’s Progress, something that always gives me great joy. I find it …

: Sabine Hossenfelder’s story in this video offers a great illustration of the perverse …

: A life of Benjamin Franklin with wood engravings

: Blake’s illustrations of the Book of Job

: A great post by Sara Hendren AKA @ablerism on places whose architecture helps us to cultivate …

: More on the benefits of handmind.

: FYI: The people at Standard Ebooks produce carefully-edited, well-formatted, free e-books. Project …

: Mikko Takkunen’s photographs of Hong Kong.

: Dorothy L. Sayers: Vitality, bullying and bounce.

: bounce J. R. Ackerley, author of that remarkable book My Dog Tulip, worked for the BBC for many years and …

: My colleague Philip Jenkins wrote about Kipling’s story “The Gardener,” and I …

: The Gardener I am very pleased that my colleague Philip Jenkins has written about Rudyard Kipling’s “The …

: Reading the obituaries for John Barth, I find myself thinking how odd it must be to outlive your …

:

: And one more: a Marie-Alice Harel illustration from Howl’s Moving Castle.

: Also from the Folio Society, a Clive Hicks-Jenkins illustration from Beowulf.

: The wood engravings of Harry Brockway — this one of the creature made by Victor Frankenstein.

: When Karl Barth wrote to Dorothy L. Sayers.

: a letter from Karl Barth On 7 September 1939, a week after the Wehrmacht invaded Poland and thus began the Second World War, …

: Couple this piece on west Texas “sky islands” with one of my own on the same subject.

: Y’all have heard me say this before, but one of the very best things about my job is seeing …

: Campus is looking nice this cool (for Texas) spring morning.

: Max Read: “It sometimes feels like Instagram designed Threads with ‘context …

: Trimming the abelia this morning, I remembered my old handmind in Covidtide post.

: Classical education vs. the factories of unreason.

: This Ted Gioia piece echoes something I’ve been saying for years: see this tag on my blog.

: against the factory of unreason Dear readers, I have returned! — and I say unto you, it might be interesting to read my reflections …

: After what felt like a very long Lent, I almost achieved liftoff this morning when we got to the …

:

: Jane Goodall on her 90th birthday: “When I look back over my life, I mean, my goodness, the …

: Angus is so happy when his people come home.

: An Easter present for me — author’s (or rather editor’s) copy. So beautifully made. The …

: Some appropriate Good Friday reading, I think: the third and fourth parts of my conversation with …

: Here’s the second installment of my conversation with Phil Christman about Auden.

: An astonishing carving that may stay in the U.K. — but the art’s the thing, this day, this …

: I talked with Phil Christman about Auden and especially The Shield of Achilles: here’s the …

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: Over at my Buy Me a Coffee page, I wrote about what I’ll be up to for the next few years.

: Last post before returning to Lenten silence: I’m really honored to have a place in the new …

: I have learned so, SO much about movies from David Bordwell, and am genuinely grieved to learn of …

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: A brief hello before resuming my Lenten silence.

: I'll Be Back in Eastertide

: Gonna be largely offline for the rest of February — see y’all in March!

: Lawrence Keaty, from Taipei (2020)

: Class Notes: Two Renewals In my Christian Renaissance of the Twentieth Century class, we’re reading, back-to-back, passages …

: When Brad East asks his students what, when they visit a church, they expect to see, one of them …

: Kinda thinking that this wireless diagnostics report that’s been running on my Mac for 10 …

: Arthur Aghajanian: “The statues of Armenia’s cultural giants embody a distinctive form of …

: Terry Teachout and the Last of the Conservative Critics | The Nation: But Teachout, whose natural …

: Lindsay Zoladz in the NYT: They traded a few lines and harmonized beautifully on the chorus — her …

: I dunno, maybe I’m an aging sentimentalist, but … the Tracy Chapman / Luke Combs duet …

: It’s been more than a decade since I’ve visited The Cloisters — that’s gotta …

: Ben Werdmuller on Arc Search: “A world where everyone uses an app like this is a death spiral …

: Ceci N'est Pas une Current-Events Post No no no, this is not at all about a current controversy. Hang in there, you’ll see what I mean. …

: Church fusion.

: The Queen and the Duke ♫

: The architectural drawings of Richard of St. Victor 

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: Miles and Pops ♫

: Fascinating from Ethan Iverson on the Duke: “Who even knows the right changes to Ellington …

: I’m on a Duke Ellington kick at the moment — there may be posts and links forthcoming — but …

: When Wes Anderson designs a bar

: I don’t feel the need to repost everything on my Big Blog here, but I’m thinking that it …

: Two fantastic essays on the history of multi-channel audio by J. B. Crawford: one and two.

: Robinson Meyer: This sincere interest in geoengineering and climate modification represents a …

: Wendish Easter eggs – from Texas!

: I rarely say that everyone should read something, but I’ll say that about this post by Mandy …

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: Here’s a short post about one of the best Nichols & May comedy routines, which means, …

: timing People often talk about comic timing, but what does that mean, exactly? Well, here’s an example, …

: Just sent a drizzly-February-morning missive to my Buy Me a Coffee supporters.

: I wrote about teaching Augustine’s Enchiridion.

: Walter Crane, Flora’s Train, tile panel, 1900-1901.

: Class Notes: Enchiridion Second in a series of reflections on what I’m teaching.  Late in his life, Augustine wrote his …

: These are wonderful.

: I wrote about anarchy in The Man Who Was Thursday.

: We’re dealing with endless displays of Potemkin AI. As Molly White says, we “need to …

: Class notes: Anarchy, Law, Pain I’m thinking that this term, when I’m teaching a number of things I haven’t taught before, or …

: Ted Gioia’s “Nine Ugly Truths about Copywright” is brilliant.

: Cory Doctorow: “AI companies are implicitly betting that their customers will buy AI for …

: Noah Millman: You can’t just hate the present and long for the past, any more than you can make the …

: Adi Robertson: “As I’ve watched the Vision Pro go from announcement to release, it’s also …

: I’m going in.

: On reading Horace: “In Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce talks of the “human …

: Damon Krukowski: “If not Pitchfork, with more daily visitors than Vogue or Vanity Fair or the …

: I deleted my micro.blog post on whether art makes us better people and replaced it with a somewhat …

: Effectual Art David Brooks: “Does consuming art, music, literature and the rest of what we call culture make you a …

: As a kind of pendant to my previous post, I comment to you this by Adam Roberts, which I thought of …

: Maggie Tulliver and her books.

: Maggie and her Books There’s a really extraordinary moment in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, a moment that says …

: A scholar named Isaac Waisberg has put together a vast collection of translations of Horace into …

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: I’m really pleased that the new AppleTV series Masters of the Air features a portrayal of …

: I wrote a parable about academics and practical men.

: a small parable Occasionally I find myself in groups populated by business people, technologists, consultants, …

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: Tyler Austin Harper: “The first step is refusing to indulge in certainty, the fiction that the …

: a note on plagiarism The Claudine Gay plagiarism scandal — or, depending on your point of view, “plagiarism” scandal — …

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: With the Mac turning 40, a question going around is: What was your first Mac? Mine was … the …

: Spatial knowledge impairment after GPS guided navigation.

: In which I endorse Ted Gioia’s theses on progress.

: placing bets The last four of Ted Gioia's seven hypotheses about meaningful progress: 4. The discourse on …

: FWIW I’ve written before about how my own history as a fabulist makes me reflexively skeptical about …

: head start The Vikings was the first movie I ever saw — not in a standard movie theater, but some years after …

: Why don’t Arsenal win every game 5-0? It seems such an obvious solution to their problems. ⚽️

: Noteworthy, I think, that neither this Becca Rothfield review of The Geography of the Imagination …

: In which I explain what I did on the first day of a new class – and then go on a wild-eyed …

: Systematic theology? I don’t need no stinkin' systematic theology – I have Joe …

: ADD revisited On the first day of my Christian Renaissance of the Twentieth Century course — mentioned here — I …

: This $100 million gift to Spelman College ought to be praised to the skies. The megarich need to …

: John Gruber – aka @gruber – on a theme I discussed yesterday, the difference between …

: Robin Sloan says of me, “Alan can make anything sound terrific, when he loves it,” which …

: What Dracula is

: If, as some think, deepfakes will become undetectable, that just might force a long-overdue …

: Howard Phipps

: I added some links, fixed some bad links, and generally updated things at my home page.

: I think DHH is right about Apple.

: Lazy day.

: DHH is exactly right: Apple has become too powerful, and with that power has come a sense of …

: Just discovered that Terrence Malick, Marilynne Robinson, and Joni Mitchell were all born in …

: Jaroslav Pelikan:  Origen may … have been the first church father to study Hebrew, “in opposition to …

: Something I often think, prompted tonight by seeing Jamal Murray (6'4") standing next to Nikola …

: Damon K: “A positive, progressive change to this system benefiting more people is not going to …

: The mysterious Roman dodecahedra.

: A wonderful collection of Milton Glaser book covers.

: Listening to the legendary Bill Evans Trio Village Vanguard sessions. Forty-five years later, I got …

: Blizzard conditions in Waco

: I wrote a bit about what I’m teaching this term and how it will affect my blogging.

: looking ahead Lately I’ve been posting in How to Think mode — HTT as the tag here calls it: I’ve been writing …

: Silence, Violence, and the Human Condition I don’t believe that “silence is violence,” ever. And I doubt that anyone else would either, if they …

: Augustus John, “A Glass of Wine” (1902)

: Mary Harrington: “A culture that valorises ‘cool’ sets us up to fail as social …

: “The Arrival,” photograph by Carol Munder.

: Legal Sauce for the Legal Goose From an an interview with Jill Lepore: I’m working on a long book about the history of attempts to …

: BBEdit 15, in addition to getting several interesting new features, has undergone some slight but …

: Currently reading: The Spirit of Early Christian Thought by Robert Louis Wilken. This will be my …

: The Mouth of Orcus, in the Gardens of Bomarzo.

: Yet another really nice one from Adrian Vila.

: Mark Hurst: Marc Andreessen is right – love doesn’t scale.

: Bertolucci Some years ago I read an article about sociopathy – I don’t remember the author or where it …

: Nineteenth-century plans for a chunnel.

: I wrote a mid-season report on Arsenal. ⚽️

: Arsenal mid-season report This side is not a contender for the league title — not even close. At this point I'm not confident …

: The bacchanal is coming.

: From an edition of Kipling’s The Day’s Work

: On going beyond the SCT — the Standard Critique of Technology.

: beyond the SCT My 2021 essay on “cosmotechnics” begins thus: In the 1950s and 1960s, a series of thinkers, …

: Kashmir Hill: “My black clamshell of a phone had the effect of a clerical collar, inducing people to …

: Making an Iron Age-style shield out of willow bark.

: The Next Turn of the Wheel This is the novelist Janet Burroway, writing about her experience making a fifth edition of a …

: A superb essay by Witold Rybczynski on ornament in architecture.

: Strange sights in the pre-dawn fog.

: John DePol

: Model box for ‘Endgame’ by Samuel Beckett, designed by Tallulah Caskey, for the National Theatre, …

: Mark Helprin: “Tending a fire enforces a sense of patience and tranquility. In that way it is …

: How a Catholic modernity killed Dracula.

: The Real Value of a Catholic Modernity In 1996 the philosopher Charles Taylor delivered a lecture – later to be published with several …

: And here is a Tiffany window from a Philadephia church. It and its companion piece were saved from …

: Here’s an Agnes Northrop window, this one at the Art Institute of Chicago.

: The Met has acquired “Garden Landscape,” a window made by Agnes Northrop in Lewis …

: On the last day of the year, I wrote a post on why I don’t do end-of-year posts.

: Who's Counting? I’m not doing an end-of-year roundup of what I’ve written this year, or what I’ve read, or what I’ve …

: Finished reading: The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn. A lovely novel, at once melancholy and …

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: I wrote a post for my Buy Me a Coffee supporters.

: I wrote about listening to Wagner.

: Venkatesh Rao: Much of the social energy of the old internet has now retreated underground to the …

: on Wagner As part of my ongoing project to understand myth and mythmaking in the modern era I have been …

: Francis Spufford on picking through the ruins of Christendom: Those of us who, despite everything, …

: I wrote about a Christmas present I received.

: Man, Moon, Book My family gave me a wonderful Christmas present: the Folio Society edition of Andrew Chaikin’s A Man …

: More landscape photographs by Charlotte Ladefoged

: Stefan Collini: “Carlyle’s forte as a social critic was not likely to lie in making practical …

: NYT: ”Despite these difficulties, there can be a reluctance among the clergy to talk about their own …

: The good Earth.

: the good earth Fifty-five years ago, on Christmas Eve 1968, astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders …

: St. John & St. Mark, from the Lambeth Bible 

: Christmas coma setting in.

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: Lo how a rose

: Merry Christmas!

: More here

: A post on George MacDonald and Christmas — though be warned, this one’s a bit of a tearjerker.

: Christmas gifts In introducing the writings of George MacDonald, C. S. Lewis made a fascinating point which can only …

: The game Monopoly basically copied an anti-capitalist game created by one Lizzie Magie: The …

: Finished reading: The Corner that Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner. A strangely riveting book, …

: The notebook of Anni Albers.

: My first thought when I read the-fediverse-is-the-future pieces is: Great, now whenever anyone …

: The Morgan Beatus Manuscript

: Brian Eno, from a 1995 diary entry: Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty …

: The Feast of the Annunciation is on March 25, but the lectionary gives us the story also on the …

: Old wine-and-spirit trademarks

: Last night at St. Alban’s, we had an utterly wonderful service of Nine Lessons and Carols. The …

: Charlie Warzel: “A shift away from a knowable internet might feel like a return to something …

: I wrote about library catalogs, analog and digital.

: Expectation.

: Pope Francis Allows Priests to Bless Same-Sex Couples - The New York Times: But the new rule made …

: cost-benefit Carolyn Dever, writing about the ransomware attack on the British Library: We’re past the days of …

: Twenty minutes early for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols and the house is already mostly …

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: A battle between Sean Dyche’s current and former clubs should be called the Diet of Worms. (Niche, I …

: James Bennet: “My fellow editorial and commercial leaders were well aware of how the culture of the …

: Brewster Kahle: “Why should everyone care about this lawsuit? Because it is about preserving the …

: words, words, words Many of our arguments are fruitless because we don’t know the meaning of the words we use. And we …

: Over at the Hog Blog, I write about why I don’t think there’s any such thing as …

: To the young blonde FexEx driver blasting D’Angelo’s Black Messiah from her truck: …

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: multiple social diseases 18 Warning Signs of a Deadly New Lifestyle - by Ted Gioia: — but they’re not all symptoms of the …

: repair as scapegoat Matt Crawford: Superficially, litter and the rusting carcasses of salvaged cars are both an affront …

: Bill Bryson: Imagine a form of baseball in which the pitcher, after each delivery, collects the …

: An amazing new newsletter issue by @ablerism (Sara Hendren) – y’all need to get on this …

: art for humanity's sake Daniel Walden: Criticism of this kind is a misuse of learning to muddle discussion for the sake of …

: Kevin Williamson, typically trenchant: “CLEAR has some fancy high-tech hoo-haw on the front …

: David Byrne: “I think the phrase that was used with My Life in the Bush of Ghosts was ‘cultural …

: Finished reading: The World of Odysseus by M. I. Finley. what an extraordinary book. I am filled …

: Nap time.

: Simple snapshot of a totally ordinary sight.

: Chris Beha: “I sometimes think that the modern world’s true cultural divide is not between believers …

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: The Reason for the Season.

: Just learned from my buddy Austin Kleon about Mishka Westell’s art.

: An extraordinary story on how redwoods survive fire.

: exam time! I often give my students take-home exams that ask them to explicate (give a close reading of) …

: self-repair [caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“600”]Michael Torevell, …

: Annie Soudain, Winter Glow, reduction lino print, 2017, appearing with this wonderful essay by Adam …

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: My problem with “brokenism."

: brokenism “Everything is Broken,” Alana Newhouse wrote in an essay that I see quoted all the time. But of …

: I’ve decided that the social media landscape is irredeemable, but this new project by my old …

: Matthew Crawford on a broken tail light that cost $5600 to repair: On this particular luxury pickup …

: Campus lookin’ real purty today.

: Austin Kleon’s new post on reading is fantastic. I will have things to say about it when I can clear …

: As some of my readers know, the theme of the new issue of Plough — repair — is right down my alley.

: This collection of links by Michael Tsai raises the question: Do I actually own anything I have …

: Future Mann I don’t know how many people read my recent series of posts on Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers …

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: My case for bringing back the blog — though not the “blogosphere.”

: bring back the blog Long long ago, in a galaxy far far away, when I was still on Twitter. I was misquoted there. I’m …

: Advent is the perfect season to begin Auden’s For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio. Just …

: My friend Jessica Martin is a priest at Ely Cathedral, and lately they’ve been having freezing …

: I just posted an update for my Buy Me a Coffee supporters.

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: a Beatly note One of the many provocative (or brilliant) (or crazy) assertions Ian MacDonald makes is his …

: A worry about the future of blogging.

: Venkatesh Rao: Despite its very different political-economic DNA, the blogosphere has become …

: David French: “I’d argue that the more politically engaged you are, the harder it is to avoid …

: I wrote about what strikes me as a very odd comment by Scott Alexander.

: I wrote about what, until I can find a better term, I’m calling conceptual Marxism.

: Scott Alexander suggesting the criteria that make someone an Effective Altruist: 1. Aim to donate …

: works for me I find this interesting: John Gruber reports that more of his listeners on The Talk Show use …

: conceptual Marxism In most respects, the concerns of Marx & Engels are very different than those of today’s Left, …

: A lovely collection of Christmas writings, edited by my colleague-of-many-years Lee Ryken.

: Bob Dylan is playing geographically appropriate covers.

: Jessica Grose: I’ve spent the past couple of weeks talking to teachers about their experiences with …

: As a counterpart to my post this morning about musical demos, see Richard Gibson’s brief essay …

: I wrote about why musical demos are so often better than the finished product. One of the most …

: Nick Heer: “None of this made the web better for people. This formula of insubstantial content …

: sound and effects I recently listened to a 2020 BBC radio documentary on George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. Very …

: the personal blog and essayism Brian Dillon:  Essays, ancient or modern, can seem precious in their self-presentation, like things …

: Wikipedia: “The tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered in the Valley of the Kings in 1922 by …

: John Stuart Mill: So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than …

: Neil Gaiman, as quoted by Cal Newport: “people are leaving [social media]. You know, Twitter is …

: If you don’t shut up I’m gonna give you such a

: writing about the Beatles [I’m taking this one down — didn’t intend to make an enemy, but evidently that’s what I did. And …

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: The blur

: Why I’m inclined to think that the chance of achieving any restraint on AGI development is nil.

: A brief explanation of how, when I teach a class, I try to have a structure and a story.

: two summative thoughts about AI One: There was until recently a battle for the soul of AGI research and development, a battle …

: structure and story I regularly teach in the Great Texts program here in Baylor’s Honors College, which is based on the …

: Matthew Butterick: “If AI compa­nies are allowed to market AI systems that are essen­tially black …

: Post-feast mood

: The one constant for us at Thanksgiving: butternut squash and leek soup. Anything else I can skip, …

: UW-M Special Collections

: WSJ: “So it turns out that of the two largest crypto exchanges, one was a fraud and the other …

: costs, continued Once you face the real human costs of your preferred policies in peace or war, you may then Warmly …

: mood

: source

: “You have to brace yourself for the bozos.” — Werner Herzog

: Doctor Who crossstitched

: Now this is what I call a magazine cover.

: Kinda weird to hear Julian Lage strumming, but this is a sweet tune.

: West Texas haboob.

: Good times and bad times for the humanities.

: Jennifer A. Frey: When Zena Hitz explains the Catherine Project (a series of online and in-person …

: An update on motives.

: an update on motives The other day I wrote: Freddie (like many people, it seems) is critical of the reasons Ayaan Hirsi …

: Paul Kingsnorth: “So: out with St George, I say, and in with one of the nation’s original …

: Great to see this tribute to Philip Johnson’s Chapel of St. Basil, a wonderful building. Note …

: second thoughts, worse thoughts? A week ago I explained that I had written and then decided not to publish a post on Israel and Gaza. …

: In which I respond to Freddie about what religion does.

: candles Freddie: Why do religions comfort? They comfort because the stories they tell involve divine beings …

: I’ve almost completely given up on podcasts, but have become a heavy user of the BBC Sounds app. The …

: Starting the day listening to my friend Sara Hendren (@ablerism) interviewed by Krista Tippett. So …

: I’m rarely envious, but okay, I’m envious.

: David Stoll: “The call to decolonize anthropology sounds as distinctively American as the …

: A significant change in Siri dictation over the past few months: commas. Commas that I don’t ask …

: I wrote about Adam Roberts’s excellent new novel.

: Slanted and disenchanted The most delightful thing about Arthur C. Clarke’s famous comment that “any smoothly functioning …

: I wrote about the importance, when thinking about politics, policy, and war, of learning what …

: what everything costs As long as resources are finite, any political or social policy helps some people at the expense of …

: Many years ago, when I was teaching at Wheaton College, someone put me on the mailing list for the …

: Oh great: “A new study suggests that explosive events in space have the potential to temporarily …

: Jon D. Schaff: “Perhaps the great neglected work of our time is Alan Jacobs’s The Year of Our Lord …

: Me, writing in 1996: In Sartre's political world there were only oppressors and oppressed: fascism …

: Everybody needs an inspirational quotation over their desk, and this is mine

: Kevin Williamson comes to Waco to cover the Texas Nationalist Movement convention. “The Texas …

: My final post – for now anyway – on Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers. …

: Mann's Joseph: 7 Last post in a series. Previous installments:  Prelude  One: the invention of God  Two: the gods …

: NYT: What’s an example of when a publisher or someone else in the [publishing] business disagreed …

: Premier League players are acclimating themselves to the tyrannous reign of VAR: It’s become …

: Rowan Williams: I would venture to guess that the people we would least like to spend a long time …

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: Ian Frazier: “According to the best scientific data currently available, both the average and the …

: I wrote a post but didn’t publish it.

: time well spent Today I spent a few hours I didn’t really have to spare writing a long post about Israel, Hamas, and …

: Charlie Stross: “I’d like to talk about something that I personally find much more worrying: a …

: My sixth post on Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers is about triangulation.

: AI is a Terrifying Purveyor of Bullshit. Next Up: Fake Science

: Mann's Joseph: 6 Herodotus (II.42) informs his readers that “the name by which the Egyptians know Zeus is Amun.” …

: Dostoevsky’s Demons was being serialized in Russia at precisely the same time (1971-72) that George …

: A new and accurate map of the World (1641)

: “Tommy, you’re cheapening the value of your signature!"

: signatures After Thomas Mann moved to Princeton in 1938, he resumed research on Joseph and His Brothers, and …

: Chipi-chipi this morning. (My wife learned that word many years ago when visiting the Guatemalan …

: A book on a barn. No, I don’t mean a book about a barn, I mean a book literally on a barn.

: The last official lighthouse keeper in the United States is named Sally Snowman.

: So far I have five posts on Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers: On Joseph and his …

: Mann's Joseph: 5 One of the most fascinating, and to me surprising, elements of Joseph and His Brothers is the way …

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: St. Pancras Station has the best Christmas tree evar

: Josh Barro: Land acknowledgements are widely derided as farces and, generally, I agree that they …

: A fantastic post by my buddy Austin Kleon on the artists Robert Irwin and David Hockney and the …

: Edited: 66 minutes in, and I really don’t think Chelsea will score against 9 men. ⚽️

: Cabel Sasser on the DAK catalog

: On Joseph and Akhenaten.

: Mann's Joseph: 4 This is Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, who renamed himself Akhenaten. In every surviving representation of …

: As a long-time Arsenal supporter, I am not happy with the club leadership’s behavior. ⚽️

: time to shut up As an Arsenal supporter who believes that Arsenal did indeed get robbed on that Newcastle goal, I am …

: NYT: “The possibility of collision isn’t the only problem with cramming low Earth orbit past …

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: Mann's Joseph: 3 This difference we have identified between Jacob and Joseph is essential to the story that will …

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: sigh

: Paul Davids is a guitarist who, a while back, did a neat YouTube tutorial on Paul Simon’s …

: A very large 1867 Map of the Country Twelve Miles Round London.

: How Jeff Tweedy had his “come to Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid” moment. I don’t think …

: beyond belief Last month I published a piece over at the Hog Blog on biblical and theological illiteracy among …

: A Generall Historie of Plantes should probably be a large book.

: The “rewiring of childhood” and the parents who are enabling it — even when they know …

: ignorance, vincible and invincible ‘Childhood has been rewired’: [Jonathan Haidt:] ‘TikTok and Twitter are incredibly dangerous for …

: Gypsy Rose, an iconic lowrider.

: Malcolm Gladwell thinks the disposable diaper is a “perfect innovation.” Maybe he should …

: Second post on Joseph and His Brothers.

: Mann's Joseph: 2 Joseph, unlike his ancestors, delights in the gods of the gentes: he knows their names and …

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: Robin Sloan pitches his forthcoming novel: “The year is 13777. There are dragons on the …

: My first substantive post about Thomas Mann’s great Joseph and His Brothers.

: Mann's Joseph: 1 There’s a long Prelude to the tetralogy — called “Descent into Hell” — which I may discuss later on. …

: RSS access is the only thing that makes reading Substack newsletters tolerable for me. If I had to …

: I wrote a new post for my supporters at Buy Me a Coffee.

: I wrote about Francis Spufford’s utterly wonderful new novel Cahokia Jazz.

: greetings from Cahokia Among the novels written in the 21st century that I have read, my favorite is Francis Spufford’s …

: I’m a big fan of the rooftop lounge at the Austin Central Library.

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: My lens was fogging up when I took this one, but I sort of like the effect.

: The smoker.

: the smoker They came, as all extremists do In time, to a sort of grandeur …  — Richard Wilbur, “The Undead” …

: Why they don’t accept this word I can’t even imagine!

: I’m beginning a series on Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers.

: A remarkable visual reconstruction of Tenochtitlan.

: Mann's Joseph: Prelude I recently read Thomas Mann’s tetralogy Joseph and His Brothers — one of the more extraordinary …

: Was Gollum a philologist?

: Smeagol, philologist I’m sure others have said this before — I doubt I have many thoughts about Tolkien that others have …

: This person with so many open browser tabs – how monstrous! Here’s what I do: See …

: Ezra Klein: “One reason I left Twitter long ago is that I noticed that it was a kind of …

: Tove Jansson

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: adjusting expectations One thing we’ve learned over the past few years is that lawyers who are good on social media and …

: Damon Krukowski: “Bandcamp may be a small fraction of the music industry as a whole – digital …

: I wrote (several years ago, but just now posted) about the wayfaring mind.

: the wayfaring mind What follows is a talk I gave some years ago at Smith College. It weaves together some common …

: Rita Blanca National Grasslands in the Texas panhandle; photo by Sean Fitzgerald. Larger photo here.

: George Saunders, Texan

: Mithraeum of Santa Maria Capua Vetere in Caserta

: BRB, I gotta take all these unused minutes to the

: My old friend Noah Millman with a moving meditation on his own first name – and on “the …

: In which I am ambivalent about Nicola Griffith’s warning to writers.

: one cheer for "negative experience" Nicola Griffith: Once you have the reader’s empathy, though, you must keep it. You must persuade …

: the nature of the transaction Ross Douthat addressing prospective donors to universities, the kind who keep giving to Harvard and …

: FWIW, one of my favorite things I’ve published in recent years is this reflection on the big …

: The pumpkin artist

: would it kill you to allow the occasional German word

: I’ve made a case for reading the news less often.

: periodicity This piece from the Dispatch (possibly paywalled) on how The New York Times misled its readers with …

: I’m really worried about Bandcamp, which is a unique and probably irreplaceable service. At …

: A fascinating account of the endlessly variable and thus confusing history of the word …

: Anthony Lane on the science of happiness: Whether there is still a place for the steady …

: Clocks, cathedrals, and one of my favorite poems.

: But even at night ... Tom Johnson: Clockmakers, flush with commissions, let their horological imaginations run wild. They …

: Ida York Abelman, “Man and Machine” 

: Chantal Montellier

: Ib Antoni Jensen

: Available in May 2024.

: I wrong a longish and complicatedish post on conceptual screens and diseases of the intellect.

: diseases of the intellect Twenty years ago, I had an exceptionally intelligent student who was a passionate defender of and …

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: Hi, we’d like to join your LinkedIn network

: My old internet friend Erin Kissane on Meta in Myanmar: “My aim with this series is to give …

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: Mark C. Taylor: I do not think human beings are the last stage in the evolutionary process. …

: My friend Tim Larsen: “Yes, I’m one of those people who had a Netflix DVD subscription right …

: I wrote about the imperative to repair things that are only mostly dead.

: only mostly dead The other day I wrote about the absolute cataract of essays and articles these days proclaiming the …

: Paul Johnson, Dies Natalis

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: V&A

: Shadows on the driveway

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: This eclipse is pretty weird.

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: Just texted a friend: “So much of my life with technology revolves around (a) realizing that what I …

: I wrote a kind of follow-up to my “Resistance in the Arts” essay, focusing mainly on the Beatles.

: begin here The essay that I published earlier this year on “Resistance In the Arts” was largely inspired by my …

: A newly discovered, and shockingly pristine, Tomb of Cerberus.

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: Charlie Warzel: “Musk has turned X into a deepfake version of Twitter—a facsimile of the …

: Good to see Brad East’s review of Andrew Wilson’s excellent book on the making of the …

: Abraham Joshua Heschel: “Prayer is not thinking. To the thinker, God is an object; to the man who …

: This is a fascinating story, with a nice bonus element: the phrase “interpretive mowing.”

: I commend to you all the wisdom of Sturgeon.

: the wisdom of Sturgeon It seems that literary fiction is dead — it even has a gravestone. Capitalism? Also dead. Tradition …

: Alexander Chee: “No one is likely to shame you for not having read Dracula, the way they do The Mill …

: I wrote about being a senior citizen who’s ready to own his introversion.

: back to my books Pretty much all my life I have been fighting against my instinctive introversion, and now that I …

: vehicles to devices Here is Ivan Illich, from Energy and Equity (1974), his book written in the midst of a global energy …

: Taking the curve at high speed

: First chiminea fire of the season!

: My old friend Noah Millman has written a very interesting piece on Asteroid City – quite …

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: This is what Angus looked like the day we brought him home. Today he’s one year old!

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: The goddess and the Madonna — a remarkable essay by Matt Milliner.

: When I’m adding items to our shared Reminders lists, I try to be as informative as possible.

: Great to see Jack Fisk getting some attention he has long deserved. “Genius” is not by …

: I wrote about biblical illiteracy among scholars, and why I think the role model for such scholars …

: I wrote about the murder of Seamus Heaney’s cousin and the two poems he wrote about it.

: the danger of eulogy In 1975 Seamus Heaney’s second cousin Colum McCartney — whom it seems he did not know personally — …

: As I keep saying: Arteta and Southgate between them are trying ensure that Saka’s career will …

: Max Rushden: “Do VARs have to be referees? They are different skills. How much would those in …

: Who is more at fault, the person who always chooses Reply All or the person who, by CCing rather …

: From a 1962 Limited Editions Club printing of Around the World in Eighty Days.

: NYT: “Most major U.S. cities now have at least three times as many security guards on the street as …

: Richard Gibson: “‘Why I Write’ is often handed to students as an encouragement to …

: The problem with this meme is its assumption that, for the people in question, there’s …

: Addressing a letter in the days before standardized addresses could be difficult.

: A complex book needs a complex annotation method: multiple highlighting colors, underlining, …

: Damon Krukowski: “Independent musicians can’t even talk about coordinated collective action …

: I wrote about Jane Austen and parents.

: Austen and parents One of the most notable traits of Jane Austen’s fiction is its gently ironical attitude towards many …

: Many pages read, many notes made, and … a thousand pages still to go. 😵‍💫

: “There is a militant type of mind to which the hostilities involved in any human situation …

: I’m thinking about anarchism again.

: a path forward It’s certainly true that power corrupts, but it’s more true that the corrupt are drawn to power, so …

: I just came across a writer who says his role is to be a truth-teller. I’d feel better about …

: Printers kinda suck, but printing is great.

: Just a tiny little reminder, should you need one, that Prince Rogers Nelson was a One of One. “You …

: PGMOL: “The goal by Luiz Diaz was disallowed for offside by the on-field team of match …

: I wrote about an extremely poor NYT piece on the Data Colada / Francesca Gino kerfuffle.

: I'm with "the bloggers" Noam Scheiber’s report on the controversies surrounding the work of Francesca Gino is … well, it’s …

: W. H. Auden died fifty years ago today, and I’ve written a brief reflection, with many links.

: Auden, fifty years later W. H. Auden died fifty years ago today. He is the single most important writer and thinker in my …

: Michael John Goodman: For me (though I am sure others will disagree!), the artistic power of the …

: It took me a long time to find a WordPress theme that (with a few minor tweaks) made my big blog …

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: Had I known about this passage from Dorothy Day’s diary, it would have been really useful to me for …

: Looks like there’s a gator on the Brazos, Ma.

: This is magnificent: The Kelmscott Chaucer online.

: Jason Bailey: A phrase like “streaming movie” or “theatrical release” or “documentary podcast” …

: We got new windows in our house today, modern double-glazed windows to relace the single-pane ones …

: Brad East on AI sermons is just outstanding: “Study and writing aren’t a mere means to an …

: department of corrections danah boyd: “Over the last two years, I’ve been intentionally purchasing and reading books that are …

: Wes Anderson: “If you work with people at different ages and you’re giving them a lot to do, …

: Today Angus took his first selfie (with my son). We’re all so proud.

: If you’re a Chicagoan, and probably only if you’re a Chicagoan, you’ll appreciate Anders Erickson’s …

: A little slice of the typographical history of New York City

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: SO GLAD to see that Francis Spufford’s Cahokia Jazz is out in the UK. I had the privilege of reading …

: I posted a small piece of autobiography from a book I wrote 15 years ago.

: What happens when you shoot a 50-year-old roll of film.

: my testimony This is an except from my least-read book, a small treatise on narrative theology called Looking …

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: If I could make one rule change to American football, it would be: eliminate kicking (punts & …

: This is gonna take a while. Currently reading: Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann 📚

: Good to see this warning from Barney Ronay. A prediction: If Arteta doesn’t significantly reduce …

: A report from Swedish schools: “As young children went back to school across Sweden last month, many …

:

: Jesus is “the lens in the dark box.”

: Charlie Warzel: “Using Google once felt like magic, and now it’s more like rifling through junk …

: My iPhone: updated, but the new StandBy feature doesn’t work. My Apple Watch: won’t update, which is …

: Legitimate WHOA: Archeologists discover a wooden structure that’s half a million years old.

: Note to makers of Spelling Bee: INANITION, MONITION, and TITIVATION are all English words and ought …

: I don’t understand how Eric Hoel can say that Substack isn’t a walled garden when large chunks of it …

: Freddie deBoer: “Sometimes I think the great American rite of passage is when you go from a youth …

: I wrote about Truffaut’s The Wild Child.

: The Child of Nature and the Citizen Francois Truffaut’s The Wild Child is a truly remarkable movie that has never gotten the attention …

: Angus does love cleaning the faces of his family. Also any other faces.

: Terry Halliday: “In 2008 or 2009, at an early stage of an extensive research program on criminal …

: The Urban Sketchers website is really cool. This drawing is by Ilaria Petrussa.

: Here’s another one.

: Eleanor Doughty’s urban plein air sketches are wonderful.

: I had never heard of takkyu-bin but it sounds great. At least in Japan. Can’t imagine it …

: I wrote 5600 words today so I decided to reward myself with the Queen of Cocktails.

: a silent adventure Whenever people speak in L’Avventura I find their talk intrusive. I imagine a Phantom Edit of the …

:

:

: A small post on François Truffaut’s handwriting.

: A letter from François Truffaut to Jean Renoir, telling the old master how much The Rules of the …

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:

: I wrote a post on being the best (kind of) teacher I can be.

: gardening strategies I love this by John Holt, transcribed by my buddy Austin Kleon: You learn to teach by teaching. I …

:

: Mandy Brown: “Are you a writer or a talker? That is, when you need to think about something, …

: Brunch!

: Here’s a September update for my Buy Me a Coffee supporters.

: My career as a fabulist.

: fabulism I was a fabulist as a child, and indeed, well into my adolescence. It was perhaps the signal trait …

: Thirty years ago, one of the great achievements of Western culture appeared. And we have documentary …

: Ted Gioia: “Taylor Swift, you are the one person who can make this happen. I believe this is …

: This week I’m teaching Austen’s Mansfield Park and, honestly, I don’t know of any other novel I’d …

: This seems miraculous: I actually need to wear waterproof shoes today.

: Here’s a shortish essay from me on the literature classroom as a place for “the …

: A brief post about Auden and Ischia.

: A fascinating little fact in this article on declining interest in studying Mandarin: On Duolingo, …

: Auden on Ischia I’m in the final stages of editing my critical edition of Auden’s The Shield of Achilles, and I’m …

: I often think about this Brent Simmons post on “Mac-assed Mac apps” — especially when …

: Sometimes I actually have to do scholarship.

:

: The palatial Granada Theatre in Chicago, from a book about America’s lost architectural …

: I wrote up a kind of summation of my posts on the desperate-times-require-desperate-measures …

: repetition and summation When you blog for a long time, as I have done, you inevitably repeat yourself. Sometimes this is …

: It’s a great blessing to me that my parish church does Choral Evensong on Sunday evenings, and …

: Bertrand Russell, in his Autobiography: “As an undergraduate I was persuaded that the dons …

: Not everyone is interested in the Oxyrhynchus papyri — IYKYK — but for those who are, this article …

:

: When Paul Schrader was asked to do a Criterion Collection Top 10, he gave a great response: …

: I haven’t really used Twitter for several years, but now I’m deleting my account.

: x nay I’ve deactivated my X account and won’t be coming back. I’ve despised Twitter for several years, but …

: Joseph Horowitz: “So unnoticed are the American arts that a major American historian, Jill Lepore, …

: Here I wonder: When do competent writers turn to AI for help in writing?

: We see so many tributes when great artists die, but we should do a better job of praising them while …

: Ronald W. Dworkin: “AI without the ballast of intuition represents the tyranny of pure …

: mechanical writing Cory Doctorow: A university professor friend of mine recently confessed that everyone in their …

: Oh boy am I excited about what Robin Sloan is up to.

:

:

: Mary Harrington on Burning Man is, well, 🔥: “All this gift-economy joy is enabled by …

: Dr. Drang: “[Judge Scott] McAfee is asking [DA Fani] Willis to make these estimates for a …

: A lovely song and a beautiful video of the live performance: Peter Broderick & Ensemble 0 - Give …

: some thoughts on habitus For quite some time I haven’t been posting here about focal practices, but I’ve been thinking about …

: Victor Mair: “As the creatively piquant online nicknames [for Xi Jinping] of …

: Heads up: I don’t believe my micro.blog weekly digest is working, and I don’t know …

: I love seeing this tribute to the translator Edith Grossman, whose version of Don Quixote is by …

: The decline of fireflies is to me one of the most depressing events of our time. When I was a child …

: I wrote a post about how much Max Ophuls loved dancing. (Also, as a side note, in The Earrings of …

: Ophuls' dancers Above you’ll find a justly famous scene from one of the greatest of all films, The Earrings of …

: Viva Italia!

:

: Tag of the Week on my big blog: Tolkien.

: J R R Tolkien died fifty years ago today. A while back I wrote an imaginary conversation between him …

:

: Ted Gioia: It’s true, we are living in the 21st century — at least according to the calendar. But …

: Joseph Epstein: “With Meatless Tuesday in mind, I wonder if the country wouldn’t do well to …

: Some of you may think I post too many photos of Angus, but believe me, if I go a couple of days …

: an exercise in branding I decided to take a flyer on this — and am kinda wishing I didn’t. It’s fun to get a newspaper in …

: An old man’s simple prayer, from Bruce Cockburn.

: This piece on blurbs reminds me of the greatest blurb ever written – almost surely the …

: Movies as old books, by Matt Stevens.

: Kieran McCarthy: “Some of the biggest companies on earth — including Meta and Microsoft — take …

: The Economist’s interactive page on the effects of the London Blitz is a fabulous piece of …

: Cameras are cool, and make better photos than phones, but Om Malik is right: their software is …

: This morning I read yet another denunciation of today’s college students, complete with …

: bureaucratic sustainability Matt Crawford: The example of China’s explosive growth in the last thirty years showed that …

: A word to the wise from Matt Birchler: “Things on the internet can be forever, but you …

: Berenice Abbott, New York City, 1935

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: I wrote about the sad story of The Band.

: once brothers The fascinating and deeply sad documentary Once Were Brothers concerns the career of The Band — …

: Cal Newport: “The Internet has become the ultimate narrowcasting vehicle: everyone from UFO buffs …

: Adolphe Appian, from a wonderful exhibition of drawings at the Met.

: One paragraph from me, at the Hog Blog: This is the way your mind ends.

: I love this: Fred Sanders finds an often-cited obviously-bogus quotation by St. Augustine and shows …

: The Scriptural BCP The Scriptural Book of Common Prayer is a wonderful resource that does its job a little too well. …

: I had been drafting a piece on the old prison work song “Ain’t No More Cane on the …

: Fleet Street, December 2019

: I love the genre of “alternative movie posters,” and Michael Krasnopolski’s are …

: Ted Gioia: “The only areas where AI is flourishing are shamming, spamming & scamming.”

: I wrote a denunciation of apps.

: against apps, for wander lines In 1980, a curiously polymathic Jesuit priest named Michel de Certeau (1925–86) published a …

: The Cat Concerto (1947). David Thomson: “The great American film about the highest artistic …

: I wrote an essay (now unpaywalled!) on the kinds of resistance that create the possibility of great …

: Finally got Angus to sit (for an instant) for his portrait.

: Tom Eastman: “I’m old enough to remember when the Internet wasn’t a group of five …

: Robert McCabe’s photographs of Greece

: This case for sabbaticals is quite good – and also a reminder to me that, while I’ve had …

: Well, I’m back.

: St. John Chrysostom: “Has [Eutropius] inflicted great wrongs and insults on you? I will not …

: Re: my Asteroid City post: I’m gonna write a long essay one day about how Terrence Malick and …

: Abandoned reading: Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews by Jonathan Cott. Dylan, the greatest …

: A Visit to Balzac’s House: “In addition to its garden, the Maison de Balzac boasts a large …

: I wrote a pretty long post about Asteroid City — but it has so many spoilers that you probably …

: what the bird said Many spoilers follow. Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City begins with a framing story: We seem to be …

: Oh, is that what he embodies?

: Cory Doctorow: “ In the Big Tech internet, it’s freedom for them, openness for us. ‘Openness’ …

: Last night I dreamed that Leo Messi lived near me and out of neighborliness did some work in my …

: Chris Arnade: “I’ve also become more convinced that while all suburban bleh might look the same, …

:

: I wrote a post about the wonderful artist Tirzah Garwood.

: Tirzah Garwood Regular readers of this will know of my fondness for the art of Eric Ravilious. Ravilious was …

: In my early years I was utterly devoted to Ace Doubles, which bound two short novels back-to-back — …

: I have an essay, “Looking Westward,” in the new issue of Raritan. (Paywalled; sorry …

: Love the style of this sign-maker, but I’m not quite sure how Teri would take it if I posted …

: I’m going to be reserving my Old Big Blog for longer essays and things that relate to some of …

: A Very Happy Dog.

: Finished reading: Small Town Talk by Barney Hoskyns. Reading about the music of the Sixties can be …

: James Hill: “Eve Arnold, the wonderful Magnum photographer, used to recount a story about walking …

: I’m having fun listening to The Science of Sound, from 1958. The liner notes are fun also.

: I’m hitting the pause button on my weekly newsletter, but that just means that I’ll be using …

: From a fascinating interview about Georgia O’Keefe’s choice of materials, especially …

: There Babylon is builded in the Waste, founded in Human desolation

: Hilary Hahn plays the Sibelius Violin Concerto — an astonishing performance 🎵

: Cabel Sasser: “Some designers are amazing at imagining things, but not as amazing at imagining them …

: More posters here.

: Justine Bateman: “Don’t forget, AI isn’t doing this to us. People using AI to eliminate jobs, …

: I have a page for my students explaining why I won’t use ed-tech software like Canvas and …

: Dylan's conversion Conversion to folk music, that is. From the 1978 Playboy interview:  PLAYBOY: Just to stay on the …

: “It’s very tiring having other people tell you how much they dig you, if you yourself don’t dig …

: Here’s an essay (PDF) about my adolescent years that I published 25 years ago. Not how I would …

:

: We got Angus a new e-collar and he finds it much more comfortable, though he sort of looks like he’s …

: outreach and generativity Over at the Daily Nous, Alex Guerrero, a professor of philosophy at Rutgers, argues that the …

: Nick Cave: ChatGPT rejects any notions of creative struggle, that our endeavours animate and …

: Oughta count.

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:

: Nick Carr: Well-turned sentences had a decent run, but after TikTok they’ve become depreciating …

: R.I.P. Robbie I’ve written before about the waves of death that are coming for some of our cultural giants, but …

: Every morning I wake up with a song in my head — a different song each day, and it could be anything …

: For those who are concerned — and I thank you! — Angus has undergone an adjustment of his …

: “Just a couple of days ago I was so happy!”

: Worst day EVAR

: possible new tagline for this blog

: nurturing Wendell Berry, from The Unsettling of America: Whereas the exploiter asks of a piece of land only …

: Justin Smith-Ruiu: The risk of attempting such a thing is that one will appear unserious and will …

: Reading more poetry? That’s a great thing. Reading a book of poetry a day? That’s a 100% guarantee …

: Prologue to an Anti-Therapeutic, Anti-Affirmation Movement: As a leftist, my core political …

: Encyclopedia Babylonica 6: Ellul Ellul’s The Meaning of the City is a book in six chapters. Though he doesn’t say so explicitly, the …

: Thanks to kind assistance, I now have a books read page. “Currently reading” is featured …

: Not a feature request, just a wish: I’d love to be able to show my reading lists (Currently …

: two quotations on corporations Charlie Stross (2010): Corporations do not share our priorities. They are hive organisms …

: a blessed 89th birthday to the Mad Farmer I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts, and tilled somewhat by incantation and by …

: Matt Crawford: Today’s Leviathan conceives its subjects as fragile beings afloat in a field of …

: We have a new Spanish place here in town — Segovia Wine Bar — and it’s really good. This is the …

: Storyboard for the dream sequence of Hitchcock’s Spellbound, in the Harry Ransom Center. 

: The Economist: Research on solar geoengineering has been side-lined, and its possible role in …

:

: Encyclopedia Babylonica 5: a brief hiatus I just realized that I need to pause this series for a while. Why? Because I’m reading Ellul’s The …

: And just as I’m posting these I see this from Craig Mod — serendipity!

: One more.

: And as I look through those photos, I find myself thinking: the Lake District — not unattractive!

: My beloved! Taken on a trail overlooking Grasmere, 2011. Today we celebrate our 43rd wedding …

: Yuval Levin: This is a fact we often miss about our Constitution. It works by setting competing …

: Greenwich Observatory, by Eric Ravilious (1937) 

: ignore strenuously Robin Sloan: I want to under score it here: where the internet is concerned, we are in a crisis of …

: Encyclopedia Babylonica 4: System The Bob Marley and the Wailers album Survival (1979) is one of Marley's most politically militant …

: A common experience for me:  Someone tweets (or “X-es”?) about something I’ve written, maybe with a …

: on technologies and trust Recently, Baylor’s excellent Provost, Nancy Brickhouse, wrote to faculty with a twofold message. The …

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: Here at Laity, I’m staying in a place called Lanier Apartment, which features interesting art …

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: Becca Rothfeld on “Sanctimony Literature”:  Sanctimony literature errs, then, not because it …

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: Ted Gioia: Boredom is built into the [Spotify] platform, because they lose money if you get too …

: I wrote to my BMAC supporters explaining (a) why I’m writing about Babylon and (b) why …

: Encyclopedia Babylonica 3: Daniel As we have seen, D. W. Griffith gives us an image of an effete and dissolute Babylonian kingdom, …

: Peter Gray: Other research has assessed relationships between the amount of time children have to …

: abnegation A brilliant, angry, nearly-despairing essay by Justin Smith-Ruiu, one that grows out of a reading of …

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:

: Encyclopedia Babylonica 2: Belshazzar Let’s talk about about the OG Babylon — not as it was, perhaps, but as we have envisioned it. For …

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: There’s the Streisand Effect and now, I say, there’s the Elon Effect.

:

: excerpt from my Sent folder: favor A friend wrote in response to my addition, at the end of my most recent newsletter, a quote from …

:

: Back in my happy place. (Unfiltered, unadjusted image — the sky really does look like a painted …

: I have only listened to two or three audiobooks in my life, but some recent struggles with eyestrain …

: Encyclopedia Babylonica 1: welcome Welcome to Babylon! I know you’re not all happy about it, but here’s something I’ve learned from …

:

: There are people whose intelligence I admire, whose decency I respect, but with whom I feel ill at …

: I saw Oppenheimer. It was okay. The Close Encounters installation in the hallway of the Alamo …

: So the wonderful Dulwich Picture Gallery is beginning a renovation that will add a … big shoebox to …

: I’ll be off to Austin this afternoon to see Oppenheimer, and while I know the Alamo Drafthouse will …

: Unanswered Questions Over the past few months I’ve occasionally made oblique references to a book I’m working on. That …

: This isn’t quite right: Auden would never have been named Poet Laureate even if his …

: a little ride in the time machine Here’s something people often don't notice about Sunset Boulevard: Norma Desmond isn’t old. Several …

: My old friend Noah Millman, who writes and directs: I love actors, and I want to see them continue …

: David Thomson: “The most daring novelty in Citizen Kane was not its deep-focus photography, …

: Mateus Asato plays “Blessed Assurance.”

: New issue of the newsletter out today. I do enjoy making my newsletter.

: How Google Reader died: At its peak, Reader had just north of 30 million users, many of them using …

: David Samuels: The reasons for the Nobel Committee’s snub [of Milan Kundera], which occurred at the …

: Taken a few days ago, when we still had clouds

: same

: Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em

: my new title I ain’t going nowhere. I’m still here at Baylor’s Honors College, and I’ll continue, mostly, to do …

: personal organization Here’s my one piece of advice about personal organization: (calendars, tasks, planning, tracking): …

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: Chisos Mountains, Big Bend National Park. I’ve been longing to get back there but right now …

: starting from zero The young architects and artists who came to the Bauhaus to live and study and learn from the Silver …

: academic bullshit My estimable friend Dan Cohen: Maybe AI tools can help to combat their unethical counterparts? …

: Megan McArdle, with a thought-provoking argument: “Once Musk readmitted the views and people …

: This interview with A. G. Sulzberger on the Dispatch Podcast is fascinating. So informative about …

: Forthcoming in Comment

: Little, Big My friend Adam Roberts wrote recently about John Crowley’s Little, Big, which is (a) one of my very …

: I tried AudioPen today. If you want to have your own words converted into the bland, characterless, …

: “Now Angus, be still, your breeder wants a nice portrait of you.”

: What I want: a universal de-notification button. “Click here if you do not wish to receive any …

: How to read weather forecasts in central Texas: If the chance of precipitation is 100% — …

:

: Oh, also here’s my handy guide for people who think they might want to read Pynchon but find the …

: My ginormous essay on Thomas Pynchon, theologian has escaped its paywall and is available for all to …

: Me: (excitedly explains something I read about Churchill and FDR) My son: You know, Dad, I think …

: more on SCOTUS and university admissions Just a few random thoughts about the Harvard opinion. (On this blog I tend to avoid opining on …

: If she would only look at me the way she looks at Angus….

: forums David Pierce: As far as how humans connect to one another, what’s next appears to be group chats …

: Baldur Bjarnason: The LLMentalist Effect: how chat-based Large Language Models replicate the …

: This is the second time recently that I’ve found an old lo-res photo on my Mac that caught my …

: The degenerate monarchists at The Rest Is History podcast have done something extraordinary: …

: patriotic effusion for Independence Day I have always, I feel, been somewhat deficient in patriotism — I just don’t have the instinct for …

: George Orwell, review of Mein Kampf (1940): Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly …

: Would I like to ride on a 1938 London Underground train? Yes I would.

: The actress Theodosia Goodman became a silent-movie femme fatale after she adopted the name Theda …

: reading SCOTUS Some facts:  Very few Americans even know what the Supreme Court does; fewer still care.  Not all …

: Thomas Pynchon, America's Theologian Today is the pub day for the longest essay I’ve ever published: “The Far Invisible: Thomas Pynchon …

: My beloved reporting from her family’s place in Alabama.

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: The best thing you are likely to read about the Supreme Court affirmative action decision — or …

:

: the system I’m going to begin by quoting a very long passage from Bleak House, one involving a suitor in the …

: Counterman implications Arguing with Supreme Court opinions, as one does — in this case Counterman v. Colorado. Now, let me …

: more on Korematsu The other day I mentioned some famous Supreme Court cases that were influenced by public opinion. I …

: That’s the Canadian River in the Texas Panhandle. The lovely photo is by Sean Fitzgerald from this …

: Still Life with Sheltie

: banal utopias JC Niala: cultivating on allotment sites has always been so much more than ‘growing your own’. As …

: public opinion People keep talking about the Supreme Court being “out of step with public opinion.” You know when …

: Currently reading: Essays by George Orwell 📚

: Finished reading: Bleak House by Charles Dickens 📚

: Anne Snyder, the editor of Comment, is doing some really important things: she’s not just publishing …

: Last year I explained why I think Jacques Ellul’s book on Christian anarchism is really bad; …

:

: In which I defend Esther Summerson, the much-maligned protagonist of Dickens’s Bleak House.

: Newsletter!

: in defense of Esther Summerson Esther Summerson, the protagonist of Dickens’s Bleak House – insofar as that outrageously ambitious …

: Every winter I think this oleander is dead and every summer it comes back.

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: Cities, appendix: Sin City On the thirty-first floor your gold plated door Won’t keep out the Lord’s burning rain

: Jessica Winter: In retrospect, it seems clear that “Inside Out” was when Pixar’s Silicon Valley …

: A new report for my Buy Me a Coffee supporters – in which I ask for suggestions of books to …

: Cities 10: last things Book XXI of the City of God is about Hell, and as a result isn’t very interesting. Now, you might …

: not for me My buddy Austin Kleon and I have often discussed the point he makes in this post: the value of …

: Currently reading: Bleak House by Charles Dickens 📚

: Finished reading: Thomas Hardy by Claire Tomalin 📚

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: Currently reading: Thomas Hardy by Claire Tomalin 📚

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: Cities 9a: the City of God coming down One brief comment about Book XX: in XX.17 Augustine comments on Revelation 21:2-5:  And I saw the …

: Finished reading: Farewell the Trumpets by James/Jan Morris. An extraordinary narrative history — I …

: Augustinian blogging: Cities 9: ends and means

: Cities 9: ends and means One of the most distinctive elements of Augustine’s method in the City of God looks like this: Now I …

: Currently reading: Farewell the Trumpets by James Morris 📚

: Finished reading: Pax Britannica:The Climax of an Empire by James Morris 📚

: Angus was timid and quiet when we brought him home six months ago; now he owns the place.

: In many minds Juneteenth is associated with the great Ralph Ellison, which means that this is a good …

: Augustinian blogging has resumed with Cities 8: parallels.

: New issue of the newsletter featuring Mozart, Lucie Rie, and catfish & spaghetti.

: Cities 8: parallels In Book XVIII of The City of God, Augustine writes a kind of parallel history of the two cities, …

:

: Mo' myrtles

: Currently reading: Pax Britannica:The Climax of an Empire by James/Jan Morris 📚

: Well, where I come from it’s definitely a word.

: Finished reading: Heaven’s Command by James/Jan Morris 📚

: Canna lilies grow like crazy in our garden, but I never quite get used to them.

: TIL that John Le Carré said that he would refuse the Nobel Prize if it were offered to him, which …

: Mark Helprin, many years ago: Tending a fire enforces a sense of patience and tranquility. In that …

: A memory out of nowhere: In Rome for the first time, riding the Metro and seeing across from me a …

: The crêpe/crepe/crape myrtles around here are at their peak.

:

: Robert Caro on working with Robert Gottlieb: In all the hours of working on The Power Broker, Bob …

: As a person who spends a lot of time in Austin, loves Austin, hates Austin traffic, and can’t afford …

: “From tragedy it is seldom but a step to memorabilia.” — Larry McMurtry in Waco, 1993

: I’m not a collector of anything, but this auction of Larry McMurtry memorabilia had some pretty …

: Currently reading: Pax Britannica by James (Jan) Morris. This Folio Society edition is one of my …

: David Brooks: “If autonomy-based liberals believe that society works best when it opens up …

: I have mixed feelings about the bokeh of iPhone “Portrait” shots. It’s often …

:

: Douthat bringing some essential Dark Energy to the question of what matters most about Orange Man as …

: absolutizing (slight return) Jon Askonas has responded to my earlier post, and his response deserves a fuller counter-response …

: I will begin to consider the possibilities of the iPad as a work device when I can set a default app …

: Making Asteroid City

: “Not in word list.” Grrrrr.

: Marc Andreessen wrote a terrible essay and I annotated it.

: Finished reading: Mozart by Jan Swafford. An extraordinary life, an extraordinary book. 📚

: The second Goat Rodeo record is fine, but the first one is absolutely sublime, and I’m re-listening. …

: Charlie Warzel: “I reminded myself to chill out, stop being such a doomer, and move on. But about 18 …

: I wrote about people who make apocalyptic or absolutist claims that … I just don’t understand.

: absolutizing and abstraction, conservation and piety Some years ago I wrote a post on what I called “the absolutizing of fright”: I have the same …

: Leah Libresco Sargeant: At Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, administrators were even …

: Charlie Stross on A.I. hype: “The real promise here is that corporations will be able to replace …

: Currently reading: Mozart by Jan Swafford 📚

: He’s become a big boy.

: Forthcoming: The Shield of Achilles I will be returning soon to my posts on Augustine's City of God, but maybe not for another week or …

: Pro tip: If anyone is more concerned about something than you are, just say that they’re …

: ESPN is now a gambling-promotion network that finds sports useful.

: Watching Reddit imitate Elon’s Twitter reinforces an important point: People who want a …

: Angus was waiting for me to get home from my journey, and don’t tell me or my family that he …

: Iowa

: I like Nick Carr’s description of the Vision Pro as a “face tiara for elite beings of a hypothetical …

: Very excited about this forthcoming book from Deb Chachra. All the hidden places in the built …

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:

: Cities 7: a digression on reading I’ve heard from a number of people, via email, about this series, and almost all of the responses …

: This photo of Mykha (from the Chicago Sun-Times) really captures her spirit.

: I’m back in my old stomping grounds of Wheaton, Illinois today, and I just learned that one of most …

: To me, the Vision Pro doesn’t look like something to use, it looks like something to be sentenced to …

: Cities 6: causes In a previous post I wrote, “The Pax Romana is not a telos, it’s merely an event among other events, …

: Kansas. I was listening to the Eno/Eno/Lanois Apollo music as I drove through this landscape and it …

: Sunrise over Waco this morning

: Ken Myers on music and silence.

: Eric Adler: “It seems a stereotypically American, and perhaps more broadly imperialist, conceit to …

: The poet Tennyson had many siblings. Once a visitor to the family home found a boy lying on a rug in …

: Let me tell you something, friends: This is something special. You’ll have to wait a while to read …

: The American National Biography is not as consistently good, but there are some fine entries there …

: Currently reading: Lots of biographies from the Dictionary of National Biography. I love these: …

: Cities 5: a digression on longtermism Not closely related to my main argument, but just a brief note: Longtermism is the version of …

: In an interview Andy Summers once said “If you’re using alternate tunings, you just don’t know …

: My friend Rick Gibson found this in an old issue of the Bell System Technical Journal.

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:

: Ezra Klein: “Jonathan Frankle, the chief scientist at MosaicML and a computer scientist at Harvard, …

: Cities 3b: City and Church My friend Brad East wrote with a partial dissent to something I say in this post: When you say the …

: Bought this copy in the summer of 1980, for my first semester of grad school. I think it’s …

: Cities 3a: political theology I got an email from a friend regarding this post: “What do you mean ‘Augustine isn’t interested in …

: Cities 4: Secondary Epic My previous post discussed the way Augustine sets up his City of God as antithetical to the Aeneid. …

: A terrific first-hand report/memoir by James Conaway on the rise and fall of Rajneeshpuram, Oregon. …

: Annotating Augustine’s City of God 📚 and listening to Dilla’s Donuts 🎵. As one does.

: Brian Phillips: “Talking about ‘prestige TV’ rather than good TV became a way to …

: Currently reading: City of God by Augustine of Hippo. Should’ve added this a week ago. 📚

: Finished reading: Ursula K. Le Guin: The Complete Orsinia by Ursula K. Le Guin. Not Le Guin at her …

: Crime scene snapshot

: There’s a general sense among athletes that, as Sloane Stephens says here, racial abuse is …

: Cities 3: hypothesis Here’s the hypothesis I’m working with now: The problem with every theology of culture is that …

: It’s newsletter day, and I’ve posted my second entry on the City of God.

: This is good from Matt Yglesias: All political sides are vulnerable to misinformation.

: Cities 2: archetype and antithesis The City of God, which, as we saw in a previous post, claims to be an account of the two cities, the …

: Emily Wilson: “In Epictetus’ version of Stoicism, the self is always the focus, even for the most …

: Caught in mid-zoom.

: That first half from Dortmund was shocking, not because they were bad but because they didn’t …

: Ross Douthat: “But for all its influence, social media is still downstream of other institutions — …

: Currently reading: The Complete Orsinia by Ursula K. Le Guin 📚

:

: I’m starting to write about Augustine’s City of God, with help from (of all people) China Miéville.

: The City and the City Should you happen to want to think about Augustine’s City of God (hereafter CD for Civitate Dei) in …

: Finished reading: The City & the City by China Miéville 📚

: excerpt from my Sent folder: the day of reckoning About fifteen years ago I started moving away from the standard research essay assignment. In my …

: Of all the tributes to Tim Keller I’ve seen, the one that resonates most strongly for me is …

: I'm no Mr. Miyagi My friend Richard Gibson: Emerging adults need to see, as one of my colleagues put it, “the …

: Currently reading: The City & the City by China Miéville 📚

: Finished reading: Mao II by Don DeLillo. Conceptually fascinating but not wholly successful as a …

: Currently reading: Mao II by Don DeLillo 📚

:

: Phil Christman: “A certain man went down from Athens to Atlanta, and fell among thieves, which …

: Michael Luo in the New Yorker:  In June, 2020, Keller announced that he had been diagnosed with …

: Clive Thompson: “The problem is that while we moderns desperately need exposure to nature, it sure …

: Oh cool: Journals having to suspend accepting submissions because they’re being overwhelmed by …

:

: Abraham M. Nussbaum: “We have all become accustomed to the gun violence plaguing our congregate …

: Taken in 2004 with what was even then a cheap digital camera on a trail on Mount Seymour, above …

:

: “Robot roll call!”

: Finished reading: The Spirit of Early Christian Thought by Robert Louis Wilken. I should probably …

: Rory Smith: “Manchester City has the air of a machine, both in the way the project has been …

: Here I creep a little closer to what a genuine theology of culture might look like.

: Matteo Wong: But language-only models such as the original ChatGPT are now giving way to machines …

: Very pleased that my buddy Sara Hendren ( @ablerism ) has joined us here on micro.blog. Check out …

: I managed to write a few halting words about Tim Keller.

: Tim Keller Well, this is a day for tears. I don’t know Tim intimately, but he is a friend, and his presence in …

: the culture question revisited I want to get back to the question of what theologians talk about when they talk about culture. …

: Charlie Warzel: “When I look at a future dominated by generative-AI tools that are embedded in …

: Glad to see that my buddy Austin Kleon enjoyed my recitation!

: Finished reading: The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand. A brilliant book — I should have read it …

: Hit up some used-record stores in Austin today – all these from the 3-dollar bins!

: Gary Saul Morson: “The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, published 50 …

:

: I read and annotated that new Tara Isabella Burton essay on postrationalism in Silicon Valley.

: From William James’s speech at the dedication of a memorial in Boston to a soldier named Robert …

: Currently reading: The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand 📚

: Finished reading: Richard Hofstadter: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, The Paranoid Style in …

: Tara Isabella Burton’s essay about post-rationalism in Silicon Valley is a vital read.

: Elon Musk, self-proclaimed “free-speech absolutist,” is happily cooperating with the …

: I wrote about the Three Paths of micro.blog.

: the three paths of micro.blog I’ve written here from time to time about the excellent service known as micro.blog — and I still …

: Currently listening: Ry Cooder - Jazz. One of my all-time favorites. ♫

:

: Jenny Odell: “I felt like I needed to protect my time more so that I could do things that I …

: Augustine, De Trinitate I.iii.5: “Dear reader, whenever you are certain about something as I …

: People say Arsenal couldn’t handle the intensity of a title challenge, and while there’s …

: A Walk in the Rain A special lo-fi casual episode, never to be repeated. Transcript

:

: From the remarkable collection of photographs at the Courtauld Institute.

: Currently reading: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, …

: Finished reading: Libra by Don DeLillo. A truly brilliant, and disturbing, novel. 📚

: Finished reading: Heidegger in Ruins by Richard Wolin. A devastating indictment. I wrote a review …

: Book Review: Heidegger in Ruins Richard Wolin’s Heidegger in Ruins is a compelling synthesis of what scholars have learned about …

: My working environment

: Currently reading: Heidegger in Ruins by Richard Wolin 📚

: Study of a Kingfisher, with dominant Reference to Colour, by John Ruskin

:

: Currently reading: Libra by Don DeLillo 📚

: Some guy wrote a whole Substack post about why books aren’t worth reading. TL;DR, dude. Why do …

: Brian Eno: “This is why the idea of surrender is so interesting to me, because surrendering is what …

: Albert Borgmann – perhaps the most important philosopher of technology in our time – has …

: Erik Hoel: “So if someone regularly talks about IQs significantly above 140 like these were …

:

: Scott Alexander: If you could really plug an AI’s intellectual knowledge into its motivational …

: Spending some time with Ol’ Blue Eyes 🎵

: WSJ: “In one study, Dr. Strayer and colleagues compared two groups of people strolling an …

:

: Currently reading: Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson 📚

: locating intellectuals In his great book The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, Robert Wilken writes:  In an age in which …

: Irony The day I discovered an important concept. Transcript

:

: without principle ‘The Godfather of AI’ Quits Google and Warns of Danger Ahead: Dr. Hinton said that when people used …

: same

: The list of musical cues in Malick’s Song to Song is hilarious and wonderful.

: cosplaying Kingship In a much-celebrated essay on King Lear, Stephen Greenblatt writes about theatrical costumes: …

: Matt Crawford: We do a lot of clerical labor to register ourselves with entities that have figured …

: Christine Emba: This story idealized detachment, “liberation” from mutual care, ensuring that …

: Why millennial men are turning to the Book of Common Prayer. Very cool! And if they’d like to …

: Tim Keller: “If the Church aims at loving service to one’s neighbor while clearly speaking the …

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: Re: those two recent links: TV and movie writers fear that their employers want to outsource writing …

: I eagerly co-sign this from Freddie: “So why write if you hate writing? … But you could …

: Tim Carmody: “A writer in 2023 is disproportionately likely to be working on a script for a …

: Emerging

: Baldur Bjarnason: “Believing the myth of Artificial General Intelligence makes you incapable …

: Currently listening 🎵

: Richard Gibson: “Current debates about writing machines are not as fresh as they seem. As the …

: Currently reading: The Spirit of Early Christian Thought by Robert Louis Wilken. Another re-read. …

: I want to move to the desert just to escape the leaf blowers.

: Finished reading: Clockwork, Or, All Wound Up by Philip Pullman. A perfect little fable, ideal for …

:

: Mary Harrington: “We need to re-imagine marriage as the enabling condition for radical …

:

: I (a) announced that I was shutting down my Buy Me A Coffee page, (b) heard from some readers …

: Klopp pulling a hammy while (a) celebrating the winning goal and (b) shouting at the fourth official …

: Finished reading: Raymond Chandler: the Library of America Edition by Raymond Chandler. Most of …

:

: I did not write about Tolkien, but I wrote about the return of the King.

:

: the Return of the King I just finished teaching Susanna Clarke’s marvelous Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and probably my …

: I wrote a while back about the ways that Silicon Valley is structurally sociopathic, but there’s …

:

: My family tell me they love my veggie soup, but what they really get excited about? The accompanying …

: Freddie deBoer: “We have a prevalent concept of the ‘practical college major’ in …

: Elle Griffin: In 2020, “only 11 books sold more than 500,000 copies — which is paltry when you …

: Greg Afinogenov: Kropotkin’s understanding and appreciation of societies then regarded as …

: “There are days like that. Everybody you meet is a dope. You begin to look at yourself in the glass …

: Currently listening: Oren Ambarchi, Shebang ♫

: I’m rewatching and re-evaluating Kurosawa.

: a revaluation Here is the great Takashi Shimura as Kambei Shimada, the leader of The Seven Samurai (1954): A man …

: Really excited for this work-in-progress by Samuel Arbesman called The Magic of Code.

: Currently reading: Raymond Chandler: the Library of America Edition by Raymond Chandler 📚

: Finished reading: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. A masterpiece. 📚

: New evidence of Rosalind Franklin’s role: “as an equal member of a quartet who solved …

: [caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“830”] Early chapter …

: Oklahoma and Muswell Hill Here I’ve joined together two posts that I wrote a decade or so ago at The American …

:

: Last night when proofreading my newsletter, I saw that I had misnamed the founder of the Paragon …

: Is our society’s Overton window unresizeable?

: This week I did a one-topic newsletter, on Scott Joplin. I rarely do these – they don’t …

: an unresizeable window Does any society ever grow more tolerant? That is: Does acceptance of a position or a group hitherto …

: Finished reading: Looking for the Good War by Elizabeth D. Samet. This one was disappointing: too …

: Currently reading/listening: Glenn Gould - The Goldberg Variations - The Complete Unreleased …

: Currently reading: Looking for the Good War by Elizabeth D. Samet 📚

: Another Sherman Alexie comment: “Self-censorship among writers is a real and serious problem in this …

: Sherman Alexie’s comment that “the right wing are censorship vikings and the left wing …

: Finished reading: Reinventing Bach by Paul Elie. What an extraordinary book — so glad I decided to …

: I get why you need to chew it, but why do I have to hold it?

: Getting closer….

: Ezra Klein: “Do we want a world filled with A. I. systems that are designed to seem human in their …

: Dr. Bill Gardner: “MAID (Medical Assistance In Dying) is inexpensive, completely effective, …

: “The internet does not recognize the state of Montana, Wheeler explained."

:

: Spotify Gives 49 Different Names to the Same Song: “The biggest problem on the web today is …

: Here I argue that our Christianity-and-culture conversations are often fruitless because we don’t …

: Christianity and ... ? This essay by Brad East is very smart, and takes the Christianity-and-culture conversation usefully …

: Rory Smith is correct: many of soccer’s problems have easy fixes. Limit the use of VAR, quit …

: Angus likes to show me his kills.

: Didn’t really need another reason to avoid flying, but, sure, let’s have one more.

: “Mr Bergman, I’m ready for my close-up!”

: Apple weather: 100% chance of rain tonight. Carrot (using Accuweather): 0% chance of rain tonight.

: Currently reading: Reinventing Bach by Paul Elie. Read it and loved it when it came out a decade …

: Finished reading: Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard. It seems wrong somehow to say that this was merely …

: I rarely offer advice, but once I gave two items of writing advice, and another time I gave two …

: Currently reading: Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard 📚

: Irina Dumitrescu on the body’s memories, and the comparative ghostliness of digital …

: Something about to happen here.

: What @dave says about Mastodon has been my experience also. I look through Mastodon posts and think …

: Finished reading: Reporting World War II: The 75th Anniversary Edition: A Library of America Boxed …

: Reporting World War II This is the two-volume Library of America anthology of World War II journalism — reports sent back …

: Ross Douthat: “Can a movement for social justice be credible and capable if it’s intertwined …

: Currently listening: Clouds, by Adam Baldych, Vincent Courtois, & Rogier Telderman ♫

: Just a reminder: if a site has an RSS feed and you have an RSS reader, then nobody’s …

:

: How to read weather forecasts (data from any source) in central Texas: If your app says 100% chance …

: “I see you’re trying to read!”

: Re: this essay on scholars writing papers meant only to game the academic-metrics system: Sounds …

: unstacked Over the last few days I have received several emails from Substack telling me that I have new …

: Ted Gioia: “There’s an ominous recurring theme here: The very technologies we use to determine …

: By Jon Haidt et al., a fascinating overview of studies indicating what young people think about the …

:

:

: I wrote this morning about Tertullian, the early church, and the “spoils of victory”; I …

: Via my friend Sara Hendren, further evidence that while the big American universities despise the …

: the spoils of victory In his Apologeticus — written almost certainly in Carthage around 197 AD — Tertullian writes about …

: Giving your money to Harvard is like giving your money to Warren Buffett.

: me against technopoly

: Currently reading: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Revisiting in preparation for …

:

: Listening to Gustavo Dudamel, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra - Brahms: Symphony No. 4 ♫

:

: Finished reading: Charles Ives by Jan Swafford. A superb biography of one of the most peculiar …

: Gregory Nazianzus: “Yesterday I was crucified with Christ, today I am glorified with him; yesterday …

: Currently watching/listening: Netherlands Bach Society, Easter Oratorio ♫

: Our little boy is growing up.

:

: Currently listening: Arvo Pärt, Passio. A worthy companion and counterpart to Bach. ♫

: I follow several Twitter accounts via Feedbin, & often click through to twitter.com. Twitter …

: Currently listening: Bach, St. Matthew Passion ♫

:

: I wrote about Le Guin and Tolkien in what is also a Good Friday meditation.

: beyond daylight ethics In a 1975 essay called “The Child and the Shadow,” Ursula K. Le Guin wrote: In many fantasy tales of …

: Took me about two days of using a Mac with a Touch Bar to realize that I would go insane if I …

: Tim Larsen on Philip Jenkins’s new book on Psalm 91: “Sometimes called ‘the …

: Robin Sloan: “I have wanted to greeble something for a very, very long time. Maybe for my …

: Anne Trubek: “I no longer feel a need to prove anything through my choice of book to read. I …

: Listening to All Melody - Nils Frahm 🎵

: One common problem with the computational photography of smartphones: it gets overwhelmed by bright …

: Heterodox Academy: “If scientific institutions continue to openly and preferentially support …

: My essay on Oliver Sacks and a “humanism of the abyss” is unpaywalled. I don’t …

: Me: the Oppenheimer Principle revisited.

: the Oppenheimer Principle revisited Eight years ago, I wrote about a dominant and pernicious ideology that features two components: …

: Molly White: “I … don’t think that a company that creates harmful technology should be …

: Damon Krukowski: “Two years ago this month, I disconnected my recording studio from the …

: “Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite spaces, …

: As my son says, Angus is like Michael Jordan: he never takes a play off. Relax for a moment and he …

: Currently reading: Charles Ives: A Life with Music by Jan Swafford 📚

: Finished reading: Murray Talks Music: Albert Murray on Jazz and Blues by Albert Murray. I read this …

: adjustments As many of my readers will know, I am continually fiddling around with my online presence, to such a …

: Listening to Thelonious Monk - Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 1 ♫

:

: Listening to Complete Mozart Piano Trios 🎵

: Bernard of Clairvaux: “It is not necessary for you to cross the seas, nor to pierce the clouds, nor …

: Teens on screens: Life online for children and young adults revealed - Ofcom: This year also saw …

: Finished reading: The Earthsea Quartet by Ursula K. Le Guin. What a joy to revisit these glorious …

: Freddie deBoer: This is a very basic point, but I find that it’s consistently under-discussed: to …

: Our new baby dogwood is looking good.

: my proposed law “Any online platform and/or application that delivers content to users may deliver only content …

:

: libraries vs. publishers Dan Cohen: Libraries have dramatically increased their spending on e-books but still cannot come …

: beseball revisited Five years ago I wrote about giving up on baseball — after a lifetime of fandom. Should the new …

: Finished reading: Chalk: The Art and Erasure of Cy Twombly by Joshua Rivkin. Rivkin is very clear up …

: learning from Hume Last week I gave you David Hume’s Guide to Social Media; today I give you David Hume’s Guide to …

:

: Technoteachers Lorna Finlayson · Diary: Everyone Hates Marking: Students want – or think they want – more and …

: The Decline of Liberal Arts and Humanities - WSJ: The liberal arts are dead. The number of students …

: Daring Fireball: “When you sign up, Wavelength asks for your phone number. That’s just your …

: Forthcoming from my friend and colleague Philip Jenkins. A kind of intro or overview here. I’m …

: Currently reading: Chalk: The Art and Erasure of Cy Twombly by Joshua Rivkin 📚

: Fear of a Female Body - Jill Filipovic: I am increasingly convinced that there are tremendously …

: Zena Hitz: The traditional monastic rule against particular friendship is the great bogeyman of the …

: Retro Description of the first-year seminar I’ll be teaching in the fall.  RETRO: How and Why the Past …

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: First light in the canyon

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: Miniature Morning Soundscape From Laity Lodge Transcript

: A bluntly powerful essay by my friend and colleague Jonathan Tran: What began as a struggle of and …

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: The Jellyfish Tribe - by Paul Kingsnorth: The growing loss of faith across the West in our …

: just purchased An excellent find, in excellent condition, and for eight bucks! Also a neat little window into …

:

: I get the security concerns that have prompted the move to passkeys, but the new strategy forces us …

: I’m still reading Reporting World War II: The 75th Anniversary Edition: A Library of America …

: humanism renewed I often see quoted a line by Carl Schmitt: The concept of humanity is an especially useful …

: Stanford Law School Dean Jenny S. Martinez:  I want to set expectations clearly going forward: our …

:

: Currently reading: The Earthsea Quartet by Ursula K. Le Guin 📚

: Bison at Caprock Canyons State Park in the Texas panhandle, which I visited a couple of weeks ago. …

: the arbiters The impossible job: inside the world of Premier League referees: An excellent in-depth study. None …

: Treat time!

: as it must to all men... When Charlie Watts died in August of 2021, I wrote: “This feels like a big one, and is certainly a …

: It would be very difficult to determine the Platonic ideal of a Steven Wright joke, but I think it …

: Heads up: the Bono & Edge Tiny Desk concert is just fantastic.

: Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive: The dream of the Internet was to democratize access to knowledge, …

: Finished reading: The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Sixth Edition by David Thomson. This too …

: Finished reading: Paul and the Faithfulness of God by N.T. Wright. Didn’t read it all, but …

: Angus has figured out how to get up onto our bed. Returning from the toilet this morning this is …

: slight return I’m back! — well, partially. Posting will be light for a while. But I certainly learned that for me …

:

: Oh, and you can’t trust Amazon with your newspapers and magazines either. If you want to own …

: The new issue of The Hedgehog Review is just extraordinary. I am especially taken by Malloy …

:

: Lionel Shriver: “I don’t always want my novels to be focused on the culture wars, but I have used …

: One of these things is not like the others

: James Bridle: “The lesson of the current wave of ‘artificial’ ‘intelligence’, I feel, is that …

: “A group of property developers have been ordered to rebuild a Grade II-listed pub that they …

: Mark Zuckerberg famously said that the Twitter founders drove a clown car into a gold mine. Now it …

:

: David Stromberg on Israel: “It is really an age-old question: When things turn dark in your country, …

: Here I am on David Hume’s Guide to Social Media.

: Here’s another one of my little experiments in sharing ideas: Paul Kingsworth recently …

: Best photo yet of Flaco.

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: I think if I could use only one recording to demonstrate how good vinyl can be, it would be this …

: Currently reading: Reporting World War II: Library of America 📚

: “A Humanism of the Abyss” — my essay on the 50th anniversary of the publication of Oliver Sacks’ …

: Robin Sloan wants me to ask “What do I want from the internet, anyway?” I’ve been …

: Garden Path by Eric Ravilious (1934)

: Finished reading: The Lord of the Rings: 50th Anniversary, One Vol. Edition by J.R.R. Tolkien. …

: That ridiculous black tail

: The Guardians A vision on the high plains.

: Our friend David Hooker is an amazing artist, and we’re so excited about this fabulous new pot we …

: Huge if true

: Over at my Buy Me a Coffee page, I explain the new ways I’ll be using micro.blog.

: David Thomson on Ingmar Bergman

: Currently reading: The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Sixth Edition by David Thomson. This is …

: Cal Newport: “The open office boom is right up there with the spread of Slack as representing the …

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: Finished reading: Analogia: The Emergence of Technology Beyond Programmable Control by George Dyson. …

:

: I keep taking pictures of live oaks because they have such distinctive interior architectures …

: Every morning when I’m putting my shoes on. Every. Morning.

: hiatus Heads up, friends: I’ll be taking a break from this blog in order to work on several projects — some …

: I wrote for Echoes, the H.E. Butt Foundation’s magazine, about repairing to the canyon to be …

: Currently reading: Analogia: The Emergence of Technology Beyond Programmable Control by George Dyson …

: Finished reading: Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary by David Hume. The moral and literary …

: of bad book reviewers and writerly cults A book can go wrong in a nearly infinite number of ways, but a book review has a narrower range of …

: Dan Wang’s annual letter is always excellent, but this year’s edition may be the most fascinating …

: “Better to talk to people than communicate via tweet.” — Deep thoughts from Elon Musk

: Currently listening: Van Morrison, Veedon Fleece. What a masterpiece. 🎵

: A Nighttime Walk with Garnette Cadogan: GC: Night walks are incredibly important. The city becomes …

: Currently reading: Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary by David Hume 📚

: Finished reading: The Virginian by Owen Wister. Not a good book, but a fascinating one – and …

: The Art of Computational Narrative - by Samuel Arbesman: Perhaps there are specific features of …

: The corruption of California - UnHerd: You, tender reader, might be scandalised by the ways of …

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: Currently reading: The Virginian by Owen Wister 📚

: Finished reading: Resisting the Bonhoeffer Brand by Charles Marsh. A fascinating brief book (really …

: Angus is a “sable” Sheltie, which is to say he’s tan with white trim – but …

: Melody Moezzi: This brings me to the most embarrassing reason I stayed on social media for so long: …

: excerpt from my Sent folder: progressive I do believe in what Cardinal Newman called the “development of doctrine” — though not precisely in …

: same old song The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression: HB 999 [in Florida] would require faculty to …

: Currently reading: Resisting the Bonhoeffer Brand by Charles Marsh 📚

: Pile of straw! Best toy EVAR!

: Finished reading: Wild Thought: A New Translation of “La Pensée sauvage” by Claude Lévi-Strauss. …

: Currently listening: Julian Lage, View with a Room ♫

: Mary Harrington: Increasingly, wave after wave of young people reaches adulthood armed with …

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: unstacked This afternoon, after I got some dreary-but-necessary work done, I took some time to browse through …

: One last photo from that foggy morning in northern New Mexico, chiefly because it has a bit of that …

: Yair Rosenberg: In 2013, Google shut down its celebrated RSS client, Google Reader, citing a decline …

: Currently reading: Wild Thought by Claude Lévi-Strauss 📚

: Finished reading: Wildwood by Roger Deakin 📚

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: the sovereignty of mercy In his sixth-and-lastly LOTR post, Adam Roberts graciously responds to my recent attempts to correct …

: Claude Monet, The Thames below Westminster

: Be ye not puckfoisted!

: “What it will be Questioned When the Sun rises over Amarillo do you not see a series of metal pylons …

: Above Taos.

: North Lake, in the Sangre de Cristo mountains.

: The four pictures I posted today were all taken this morning in a bizarrely thick fog in …

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: Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow Turns 50 - by Ted Gioia: Pynchon may still have many admirers, …

: Trying another photo just as a test.

: Another fun fact: Dalhart is closer to Cheyenne, Wyoming (and five other state capitals) than it is …

: If you did what I did today, drive from Waco to Dalhart, you would swear that the whole drive was …

: Afternoon sky over a gas station in Dalhart, Texas. Couldn’t do anything except grab a quick shot …

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: See also one of my favorites among my own essays, “Filth Therapy.” 

: I appreciate the respectful tone of this essay, but … I guess I am bemused by the widespread feeling …

: Lunch!

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: David Hockey, from A Rake’s Progress (1963) 

: Dishonor Code: What Happens When Cheating Becomes the Norm?: Most professors, students said, grasp …

: This Arsenal side is playing some absolutely gorgeous football. What a delight to watch. ⚽️

: possibility Over at Plough, the tag is: Another life is possible. This ought to be a mantra for most of us. We …

: Culture as Metastasis - by Mary Harrington: All the way back in 1994, Baudrillard could see that …

: beyond creepiness One thought about that incredibly creepy Snapchat TV ad — so creepy that I’m not even going to link …

:

: Currently reading: Wildwood by Roger Deakin 📚

: Eduardo Galeano: In the morning, one of the prisoners who hadn’t yet lost track of the calendar …

: Here’s a beautiful meditation by Eleanor Parker on the Cross and the medieval poem “The Dream of the …

: unsimulated Re: this essay by Alexa Hazel — of course people think we’re in a computer simulation. We always …

: Finished reading: The Age of Eisenhower by William I Hitchcock 📚

: in brief If I were a journalist and given the task that Nathan Heller had, here’s the primary (though not the …

: Re: my buddy Austin’s recent post on indexing notebooks, for most of the last decade I have used …

: Currently reading: The Age of Eisenhower by William I Hitchcock 📚

: a better way I’ve often written in praise of RSS — see the tag — as a Better Way to read stuff online than any …

: For Chat-Based AI, We Are All Once Again Tech Companies’ Guinea Pigs - WSJ: Celeste Kidd, a …

:

: Finished reading: Bad Land: An American Romance by Jonathan Raban. What a superb book – and …

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: Currently reading: Bad Land: An American Romance by Jonathan Raban 📚

: Charlie Stross: The thing I find most suspicious/fishy/smelly about the current hype surrounding …

: Finished reading: Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West by H. W. Brands. A brilliant …

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: Currently reading: Dreams of El Dorado by H. W. Brands 📚

: Great, now I’m singing “If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal” to the tune of “If I …

: The Economist: Wilmore, Kentucky, is the kind of quaint town (population 6,027) you might drive …

: the evacuation of choice A. O. Scott’s reflection in the NYT on the video record of the horrific murder of Tyre Nichols …

: Was getting some work done when Angus discovered that he could climb up into my chair. This could …

: Kevin Williamson: Speaking about the prospect of “national divorce” on his radio program, Matt …

: Cal Newport: Imagine if the Supreme Court threw caution to the wind and radically rolled back …

: Finished reading: The Earliest English Poems by Michael J. Alexander 📚

: Bishop George Sumner: The See of Canterbury combines, impossibly, leadership of the Church of …

: Three Temptations, and Three Triumphs | Philip Jenkins: Psalm 91 was very famous and well-used, and …

: The Castelbarco Tomb, Verona, by John Wharlton Bunney

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: Currently reading: The Earliest English Poems edited by Michael J. Alexander 📚

: books as toys C. S. Lewis, letter to Arthur Greaves, 1932:  To enjoy a book like [Froissart’s Chronicles] …

: plain speaking Letter to Eric Fenn of the BBC:  Magdalen College, Oxford. 7th May 1943. My dear Fenn, Sorry again. …

: Re: this explicit deepening of Pope Francis’s hostility to trad Catholics, let me call attention to …

: Grayson Perry, detail from Print for a Politician (click to see larger image) 

: the classics are all right Re: the recent kerfuffle over the vandalism of Roald Dahl’s books, Walter Kirn tweeted “I ran into …

: his harshest critic I recently re-read Ruskin’s The Seven Lamps of Architecture, in the third edition of 1880. Ruskin …

: Currently reading: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien 📚 (I’ve heard good things, but …

: John Ruskin, Study of the Marble Inlaying on the Front of the Casa Loredan, Venice

: Albert Murray and me From my new essay for Comment on Albert Murray’s “blues idiom”:  For white North American Christians …

: Claude Monet, The Museum at Le Havre

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: Finished reading: The Seven Lamps of Architecture by John Ruskin. Back to it for the first time in …

: Twits It’s been widely reported that the U.K. children’s book publisher Puffin is producing a new edition …

: Currently reading: The Seven Lamps of Architecture by John Ruskin 📚

: Inside the Bro-tastic Short-Term Rentals Upending an Austin Community: Almost anywhere you find …

: Nick Catoggio: Dominion might win its suit notwithstanding the general truth of what Kevin …

: I want this (forthcoming) book just for its cover. Or the cover as a poster.

: Cory Doctorow: “In its nearly 25-year history, Google has made one and a half successful products: a …

: question and answer Question: How bad would the whole AI/search/chat situation have to get — how much real-world harm …

: strings and bows Making the Sausage - Freddie deBoer: That said, I feel that the only value proposition I really …

: Finished reading: The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis. Delightful to come back to this and read it …

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: Continuing the recent reflections on fantasy, it me: Like many other fantasy writers, [Hope] …

: tradeoffs David Sax, from The Future Is Analog:  “The ideas that come to our mind are around curiosity, …

: Currently reading: The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis 📚

: Costică Brădăţan: As she pondered and internalized the meanings of slavery, affliction, and …

: When it gets something wrong, Bing Chat begins by getting touchily defensive and then escalates to …

: From the Wilton Diptych (National Gallery) 

: self-sacrifice and despair Adam Roberts: And in the middle (round about the two-thirds point, actually) there is the odd, …

: Terry Eagleton: For a slim volume, [Peter Brooks’s] Seduced by Story covers an impressive array of …

: Finished reading: Once and Forever by Kenji Miyazawa — a marvelous book of marvelous tales. 📚

: In which the fell beast contemplates the sunrise.

: Finished reading: The Annotated Hobbit by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien 📚

: Ed Ruscha, Sin

: Currently reading: The Annotated Hobbit by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien 📚

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: Finished reading: William Blake vs the World by John Higgs 📚

: 'Satan viewing the Ascent to Heaven' from The Paradise Lost of John Milton with illustrations by …

: Paul Ford: "The real reason Twitter lies in ruins is because it was an abomination before God. It …

: Who among us hasn’t met ChadGPT?

: Culling my RSS feeds this afternoon, I was both saddened and annoyed to see how many museums that …

: Blake domesticated John Higgs’s William Blake vs the World is a real disappointment. Higgs writes vividly and is a fine …

: Currently reading: William Blake vs the World by John Higgs 📚

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: Paul Kingsnorth:  Everybody is talking these days about the decline of the West, and with good …

: Finished reading: Winters in the World by Eleanor Parker. What an absolutely marvelous, wondrous …

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: Finished reading: Essayism: On Form, Feeling, and Nonfiction by Brian Dillon 📚

: Currently reading: Winters in the World by Eleanor Parker 📚

: Finished reading: The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe – for the first time in forty …

: Finished reading: Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees 📚

: Finished reading: The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany 📚

: Finished reading: Phantastes by George MacDonald 📚

: Finished reading: The Sense of an Ending by Frank Kermode (good to return to this masterpiece of …

: Finished reading: For Keeps by Pauline Kael 📚

: To date I have been recording what I’m reading but not when I finish a book. But doing the …

: Just posted a State of My Mind Address to my Buy Me a Coffee supporters.

: frictionless ignorance Andy Baio: Google used to take pride in minimizing time we spent there, guiding us to relevant …

: Ted Gioia’s State of the Culture 2023 “speech” is a feast of provocations.

: the verdict is in

: Robert Joustra: I think the importance of [Katelyn Beaty’s Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, …

: Operation Diogenes I don’t usually think much about things I have already published, but I have continued to meditate …

: Franciska Coleman:  In this paper, I undertake a qualitative exploration of how social regulation of …

: Currently reading: Paul and the Faithfulness of God by N.T. Wright 📚

: My friends Jeremy Botts and Richard Gibson teach a course called Technotexts, and have an exhibition …

: Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor: The philosopher Harry Frankfurt defined bullshit as speech that …

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: Kevin Williamson: The point of keeping Trump administration veterans out of positions of public …

: be your own algorithm Damon Krukowski: “I know it can be difficult, with so much choice, to figure out what to focus on. …

: Currently reading: The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe 📚

: FWIW I’m not watching The Last of Us because (a) I don’t have and don’t want HBO, (b) I think all the …

: Wesley Hill: It could be that what we have in Esther isn’t just a theology of divine providence and …

: From my dear friend John Wilson: Ever since I “discovered” book reviews, when I was in high school, …

: Talia Barnes: I traded my smartphone for a dumbphone to simplify my life. Then I revived my iPod. …

: New edition of the newletter, with a movie title sequence, Italian advertising, and Bob Dylan, among …

: From James Agee’s obituary for H. G. Wells in Time (Aug. 26, 1946):  It was H. G. Wells's tragedy …

: “I’ve had Holy Communion and four doughnuts, so this has been a great day” – …

: doin thangs I haven’t written much over the years about what people call “productivity,” partly because I don’t …

: When I’m nervous and stressed, few things are as calming to me as fiddling around with the …

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: GIGO Freddie deBoer: Elite American colleges are already more racially diverse than the country writ …

: Currently reading: Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade 📚

: “The Teleprinter,” Eric Ravilious (1941)

: Currently reading: Once and Forever by Kenji Miyazawa 📚

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: I mean, it’s what happened to Eustace Scrubb, so it ought to be a word.

: Lebenswelt Adam Roberts (yes, again): My problem is not that [Miles Cameron’s Against All Gods] gets this or …

: Jahan Ganesh:  The controversies of the day expose a problem with the right and it isn’t corruption. …

: inertia Peter Gray: In the late 19th and early 20th century, many people became concerned about the ill …

: weapons and separations Adam Roberts: But the thing that struck me is the way Gandalf comes back invulnerable. The last we …

: more, please Ah, here it is: the musical equivalent of ChatGPT. Cool. I want to see more of this. I’ve written …

: The Media Very Rarely Lies - by Scott Alexander: Suppose Infowars claimed that police shootings in …

: schooled In his brilliant book J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, Tom Shippey spends a good deal of …

: He’s been like this for 30 minutes. I don’t think I’ve ever been that comfortable.

: Tony Cearns explains how he made this photograph. 

: I’m not crazy about David French’s going to the NYT, because I think we need more excellent writers …

: Currently reading: Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees 📚

: Hooded intruder thwarted by fierce household defender.

: Another pro tip: While you’re waiting a week for the limoncello to brew, add the juice from …

: Pro tip: when life hands you Meyer lemons, make limoncello.

: the end of the timeline era Glenn Fleishman: With Mastodon, you’re not dealing with a giant, faceless company — or a constantly …

: note to self Repair begins with redirection. Commencing the repair of our cultural ecosphere by shifting …

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: Dunsany's games In the class I’m currently teaching on fantasy, we are moving from George MacDonald’s Phantastes to …

: Fun and games.

: focal practices for pilgrim people: intervals In one sense the question I posed in an earlier post — What are the proper focal practices for a …

: Currently reading: Standing by Words by Wendell Berry 📚

: My buddy Rob Miner bought this for me in Amsterdam – and it sounds great. But I’m …

: burn after reading Dear colleagues, I must congratulate you all on what is, so far, a perfect execution of our Plan. …

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: Re: yesterday’s cover art, How to Think has now been translated into: Arabic Chinese (PRC) Chinese …

: reflections Phantastes is all about doubling: reflections in mirrors, a cave of making juxtaposed to a grotto of …

: R. I. P. Lin Brehmer I’m a Texas guy now and proud of it, but Chicago is deep in my heart and always will be — and an …

: There’s a lot of this. Also, Angus is committed to (a) peeing outside and (b) pooping inside.

: Cover for the forthcoming Arabic translation of How to Think.

: Currently reading: The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany 📚

: enshittification The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok | Cory Doctorow:  Here is how platforms die: First, they are good …

: the buffered self in Fairy Land A number of years ago I wrote an essay called “Fantasy and the Buffered Self” in which I applied …

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: Currently reading: Essayism: On Form, Feeling, and Nonfiction by Brian Dillon 📚

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: A proper Texas breakfast.

: moderation in consistency: fantasy edition Adam Roberts: I have, I think, a rough model of the broader discursive-etymology of Middle …

: Drives me slightly nuts when I am one letter away from an enormous word.

: I said to Angus this morning, “Certain elements of your behavior are irreconcilable with …

: the post-literate academy and this blog The Post-Literate Academy - by Mary Harrington: When it’s so difficult to imagine the academy as we …

: two views of Iain McGilchrist Andrew Louth: Although McGilchrist is clearly arguing a case (a case that he feels needs to be …

: Currently reading (in one of my most treasured volumes): Mont Saint Michel and Chartres by Henry …

: Kierkegaard, from his Journals:  Christianly the emphasis does not fall so much upon to what extent …

: Glamour shot.

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: Matthew Loftus: The option to kill always punishes the most vulnerable. Those who are wealthy and …

: It’s good to be back on campus.

: Currently reading: Phantastes by George MacDonald 📚

: Pro tip: When you’re trying to get a portrait shot, it’s important that the subject …

: trouble I’ve got a few posts queued up, but I am expecting serious disruption in service next week — like, a …

: comping Brad Mehldau:  I began to learn that instrumentalists and singers often didn’t want or need … …

: … but he’s getting quite comfortable already.

: Angus was a little nervous for the first few minutes here…

: the ed-tech business model NYT:  The misuse of A.I. tools will most likely not end, so some professors and universities said …

: Joel Coen: As writers … long-form was never something we could get our heads around. It’s a …

: Giorgio Agamben, Idea of Prose: Study, in effect, is per se interminable. Those who are acquainted …

: peeved This should not annoy me as much as it does, but … here’s a sentence that I see sometimes in books …

: Currently reading 📚

: SO cool to see this from my friend (and former colleague) Shawn Okpebholo!

: Richard Hanania: I don’t like inconveniencing others, and for many parents the possibility that one …

: Just posted an update for my Buy Me a Coffee supporters.

: Ross Douthat: Liberalism cannot easily renew itself, because despite what certain of its detractors …

: the Christian and the hearth In traditional Roman culture, the focus, the hearth, is all about holding the family together: the …

: Richard Gunderman: Thanks to [Lillian] Gilbreth, workers would be treated not as cogs in a machine, …

: John Warner: Many are wailing that this technology spells “the end of high school English,” meaning …

: Jesus 5: Parabolic On insiders and outsiders.

: Currently reading: The Secret Gospel of Mark by Geoffrey S. Smith and Brent C. Landau 📚

: allegory of ... something

: Currently listening: Emerson Quartet, Bach: The Art of Fugue ♫

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: one more word on Kael That’s my copy of Pauline Kael's For Keeps, the enormous collection of the essays on and reviews of …

: I’m 100% with MKBHD on this – or rather, even more critical than he is. I’m taking …

: truth  “Oh, it's so hard to be good under the capitalistic system.” — Genevieve Larkin (Glenda Farrell) in …

: For years I’ve been determined to decline invitations in this way, but I always chicken out.

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: greatness in film The 2022 Sight and Sound critics’ poll of the greatest films of all time featured a surprising …

: one of the classic blunders A while back I quoted Amna Khalid’s thoughtful response to the Hamline University kerfuffle; now we …

: Currently reading: The Sense of an Ending by Frank Kermode 📚

: Maybe one day I’ll get tired of taking pictures of trees, but not this day.

: Escaping the Malthusian Trap: What an amazing graph-in-motion by Kieran Healy. Malthus believed that …

: Forthcoming in Comment.

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: projects and methods Perhaps because I write different sorts of books, one of the most important writerly skills I have …

: Finished reading: Why We Drive by Matthew B. Crawford. Fascinating book — I’ll probably blog about …

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: Currently reading: Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life by Albert Borgmann 📚

: Hmmm, maybe, given current trends, I should put this little baby up for sale on eBay. 

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: Italo Calvino: I belong to that portion of humanity—a minority on the planetary scale but a …

: Here’s a wonderful post by Ian Paul on the Epiphany story — what Matthew and Luke have in common and …

: Honestly, I’m glad about this. The team’s behavior was disgraceful — and it starts with the manager. …

: Currently reading: For Keeps by Pauline Kael 📚

: why Kael matters Of all the great movie critics, present and past, I suppose the one whose judgments about particular …

: Damon Krukowski: We are in a far worse situation than we were in 1991. Thurston’s part-jokey, …

: pre-empted About a month ago I started drafting an essay about how Richard Rorty both predicted the rise of …

: [caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“2400”] Owens Salvage, …

: Cassiodorus College For a few years, starting around a decade ago, I blogged at The American Conservative. Sometime in …

: Some of the trees around here started turning in November, others in December, and a few are turning …

: Jesus 4: Eyewitnesses Stepping back for a bit of semi-scholarly context. It won’t happen again, I promise.

: Senator Ben Sasse says that the real divide in America is between Pluralists and Zealots; I made the …

: Interesting crop of works and makers entering the public domain this year.

: the home's sacred fire In this book, Ralph Cudworth makes the following fascinating argument:  Now the Tabernacle or Temple …

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: Dominic Sandbrook: There’s no way our podcast, presented by two white Oxbridge-educated middle-aged …

: When did this practice of writing accusatory and dictatorial headlines begin? It’s universal now. It …

: The Year of Focal Practices I declared 2021 the Year of Hypomone and 2022 the Year of Repair. I have not ceased to need hypomone …

: Currently reading: Why We Drive by Matthew Crawford 📚

: My kind of year-end list: the 10 best films of … 1932.

: Just give me one import from Latin

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: George Giusti

: Nearly eight hundred people attended the Christmas Eve services at my church, St. Alban’s Waco …

: There’s no current soccer player I dislike as much as Cristiano Ronaldo, but if he had gone to …

: “Standards-based interoperability makes a comeback, sort of” – The best brief overview I’ve seen of …

: removals: a few year-endish thoughts One: I don’t do year-end lists, and I typically don’t read those of others. (Those of you who write …

: at the movies The “movies” tag at the bottom of this post will point you to what I’ve written about that artform …

: Amna Khalid: But most of all, I am offended as a Muslim. In choosing to label this image of Muhammad …

: casting about I recently re-read Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer and experienced an epiphany: the perfect Aunt Emily …

: illusions and their removal In The Point of View of My Work as an Author Kierkegaard explains why he writes sometimes under his …

: Ted Gioia: “This is James Daunt’s super power: He loves books.”

: This NYT essay on Rudy Van Gelder’s famous recording studio is fine, but the photos are great. 

: reading Pynchon Some years ago I tried to write a book that I called Anthropocene Theology … well, actually, I did …

: Nick Cave: Grief can be seen as a kind of exalted state where the person who is grieving is the …

: Currently reading: A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books by Charles Dickens [specifically The …

: movie cards When preparing to shoot a scene, the film director Alejandro Iñárritu prepares note cards to help …

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: markets and economies David L. Bahnsen: [Rusty] Reno’s ongoing mistakes are derived from his first mistake — the …

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: Long coveted on vinyl!

: Context

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: Where loues are Christmast, with all pleasures sorts

: How Would You Prove That God Performed a Miracle?: J. Ayodeji Adewuya is a professor of New …

: Christmas Eve lunch with my dear ones. ❤️

: the friendliness of objects Roger Scruton:  Repair [at an earlier stage of our culture] was not so much a habit as an honoured …

: Jesus 3: A Poem For Christmas Eve “A Christmas Hymn,” by Richard Wilbur

: Ross Douthat’s Advent-themed newsletter quotes Auden and, um, me – so you know …

: I’d like a version of Spelling Bee in which the only acceptable words are proper names from …

: Currently reading 📚

: Katherine Rundell:  The difficulty of Donne's work had in it a stark moral imperative: pay …

: Tim Carmody: What happens when engineers stop thinking of their interests as fundamentally aligned …

: Matt Crawford: There appears to be a circle of mutual support between political correctness, …

: Angus and his mama, Gypsy.

: Currently reading: Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov 📚

: Jesus 2: An Advent Poem “The Coming,” by R. S. Thomas

: what a loss We just watched To Be or Not To Be for the first time in a while. What an extraordinary movie; I …

: Latewood | A Working Library: In the spring, when the weather is (hopefully) warm and wet, a tree …

: beyond persuasion art, not argument | sara hendren: I have thus far assembled a body of work that lists between the …

: two kinds of work Almost forty years ago now, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote to a New York Times reporter to respond to …

: I’ve got some advice for people who might consider moving from Twitter to micro.blog — with links to …

: Currently reading: Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell 📚

: the age of taipa I don’t want to ask whether pop music is worse than it used to me, because that’s an unanswerable …

: It’s a good time to remember Hilaire Belloc’s Christmas card.

: No Other Options — The New Atlantis: One of the greatest reasons for concern is the sheer scale of …

: This is Angus. He’ll be joining our family in a couple of weeks. We’re chuffed.

: I think the puzzlemakers exclude some words simply because they’re too big.

: I just posted an update for my Buy Me a Coffee supporters.

: I’m a little nervous about starting this microcast series on Jesus, because I’m not good …

: Jesus 1: I Think I’m a Principal The first in a series of brief audio meditations on Jesus.

: I’ll believe in AI when I can say, “Hey Siri, please hide from me all references to AI. Also every …

: defining immortality down Digital Eternity Is Just Around the Corner:  As these technologies develop and become more …

: Current listening: Yo La Tengo, Fakebook ♫ (a grossly underrated record) 

: If your Christmas season doesn’t include a viewing of The Shop Around the Corner, it really …

: ‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes - The New York Times: For the first time, she experienced …

: This has some useful reflections on the (often unfortunate) powers of literary executors — a subject …

: Elizabeth D. Samet, in an interview: World War II gave us a way to look at the world as an …

: Space debris expert: Orbits will be lost—and people will die—later this decade | Ars Technica: Ars: …

: Pelé Brian Phillips’s new podcast episode on Pelé reminds me that, back in the day, when I was …

: Currently reading: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy 📚

: attention and reading In response to my post on my readerly annotations, my friend Adam Roberts writes:  I buy a lot of …

: defilement redux What the Hell Happened to PayPal?: Increasingly, it is becoming a police officer. It is deciding …

: my skillz So I just re-read Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World — a book I read not long after it came …

: Currently reading: Death Be Not Proud by David Marno 📚

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: why liberals should read smart conservatives Liberals should read smart conservatives not because they need to be convinced by conservative …

: Currently reading: Henry James: Collected Stories Volume 2 (Everyman’s Library) by Henry James …

: leopards Fifty or sixty years ago, one of the most common genres of nonfiction book in this country concerned …

: Ezra Klein: “A town square controlled by one man isn’t a town square. It’s a storefront, an art …

: Lovely choral Evensong this evening at St. Alban’s. “Lighten our darkness, we beseech …

: Street furniture

: May I never be called a rantipole.

: Catastrophic tactical error by Southgate: After an Arsenal legend scored for France, he brought off …

: NYT: “As weird as the story [Pinocchio] is, it’s been made all the stranger by the decision to turn …

: Leo Strauss and the Closed Society by Matthew Rose | Articles | First Things: Strauss was not the …

: The Struggle To Be Human - by Ian Leslie - The Ruffian: Whether it’s music, movies or politics, we …

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: Can’t stop singing this.

: The link in the previous post goes to a current Penguin edition, but I’m reading the copy I bought …

: Currently reading: In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin 📚

: In my experience — and I do have some experience with this phenomenon — when a journalistic outlet …

: Whaddya mean that’s not a word? It’s my gamer handle!

: DHH argues that European nations should pursue digital sovereignty. I think this is right. So far …

: I like having a corkboard.

: common ground and its enemies From the More in Common report on the History Wars: [M]ore than twice as many Democrats agree that …

: Currently listening ♫

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: Olivia Snow: I’ve already been lectured about the dangers of how using [Lensa] implicates us in …

: imagined railways Matt Yglesias thinks that Amtrak should focus all of its efforts on bringing high-speed rail to the …

: the blog as a seasoned technology For several years now I’ve been writing about the distinctive virtues of blogging, which has become, …

: An appropriate day to remember one of Waco’s greatest heroes.

: Trying out the new global shortcut for microposting in MarsEdit 5 – looks like it works …

: oh, okay, one more post On these matters. This from Roald Dahl’s story “The Great Automatic Grammatizator” (1952):  “That’s …

: An anti-slavery medallion by Josiah Wedgwood But:  Wedgwood seems to have thrown himself behind the …

: a year of new avenues A year of new avenues: a fantastic post by Robin Sloan, just fizzing with ideas. Here are the ones …

: Currently listening: Van Morrison, Veedon Fleece (one of my favorite records for more than forty …

: In Douglas Rushkoff’s new book, he acknowledges that he was wrong to say, as he was perhaps the …

: When I read crypto-bro stories like this one I always think of Yeats: “The rhetorician would deceive …

: Currently listening: Charles Mingus, Blues and Roots ♫

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: Leon Shamroy, writing in American Cinematographer in 1947: Not too far off is the "electronic …

: Currently listening: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book ♫

: Currently reading: Trickster Makes This World by Lewis Hyde 📚

: This post by Victor Mair on the staggering variation in translations of the Daodejing points to …

: and then? Illustration by my buddy Austin Kleon  As I mentioned in earlier posts, Noah Smith wants to …

: Megan McArdle, arguing that trying to use social media’s moderators to crack down on misinformation …

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: A game of unforced and amateurish errors by 🇺🇸 ⚽️ — oh well.

: Where’s Brian McBride when you need him? 🇺🇸 ⚽️

: A wonderful idea from Zeynep Tufekci: donate to Partners In Health in memory of the great Paul …

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: Much talk in the past 24 hours about Luis Suarez’s deliberate handball against Ghana in the 2010 …

: Foggy morning in the canyon.

: A wonderful list of books for Christmas presents by my friend John Wilson, the most imaginatively …

: two quotations on slow reading The Guardian: But there is power in reading slowly, something the Chinese-American author Yiyun Li …

: I like my job Derek Thompson: “These language models enable the automation of certain tasks that we’ve …

: no comment

: two quotations on reading books “My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer, and I have my mind…and a mind needs …

: Laity looking especially lovely on this cloudy autumnal day.

: Gruber: “Mastodon is — deservedly! — getting a lot of attention as people re-evaluate their use of …

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: words: bashed Noah Smith and “roon”: It’s important to realize exactly why the innovations of the past didn’t …

: ripeness For some reason I haven’t thought about this passage in years, though it is one of the most glorious …

: Finished reading: Stealing for the Sky, by Adam Roberts. A terrific brief SF thriller — fast-paced, …

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: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie comes out fighting for freedom of speech: We are all familiar with stories …

: Tyler Adams’s response yesterday to a confrontational Iranian journalist was remarkably impressive. …

: political football Brian Phillips:  It seems safe to say that beneath this admiration, there is still, for many …

: I am thrilled to have been so wrong about this USMNT side. What I didn’t expect: their defensive …

: comparative study of real and fictional corbies Carol Rumens: There’s a human narrator, but s/he bows out after three lines. Of the two crows, one …

: It's very hard not to laugh at this: Twitter-addicted journalists decamping for Mastodon only to …

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: Real Presence in Sex and Sacrament Jessica Martin: I am not sure that we meant to place the holy eucharist inside the temple to the …

: Currently reading: Murray Talks Music: Albert Murray on Jazz and Blues by Albert Murray 📚

: Same

: medical discourse A follow-up on one element of this post: It would be uncharitable and just plain wrong to conclude …

: lies, yours and mine Staying for the Truth | The Hedgehog Review: Bacon … thinks it is good, very good indeed, to be …

: Currently reading: Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie as told to Albert Murray 📚

: hiding your hand I don't know who Noah Kulwin is — someone, I don’t remember whom, linked to this post, which among …

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: Barney Ronay: Qatar is not, when you look more widely, some kind of rogue state peopled by a …

: Sam Harris on Whether Religion Really Does Make Everything Worse: Sam Harris: The God of Abraham is …

: I fervently hope that when I’m gone people will say “He was a right rumptydooler, he was.”

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: Sun’s out after a few days of (very welcome) rain.

: What We Owe Our Fellow Animals | Martha C. Nussbaum | The New York Review of Books: Behind these …

: Listening to: Bill Frisell, Four ♫

: Final analysis: same as halftime. A solid performance by the USMNT: they were composed and competent …

: Halftime analysis: USMNT dominating in midfield, but has no finishing. ⚽️

: I’m sticking with my prediction, but it would be the most USMNT thing ever to beat England and …

: Even if you hate soccer, listen to the first few minutes of this podcast to discover how my friend …

: My prediction for USA-Wales was 0-0; it finished 1-1. My prediction for today’s match: England 3-1 …

: I hand-write a lot, but I don’t boost it much these days because I’ve come to realize …

: ark head Venkatesh Rao: One mental model for this condition is what I call ark head, as in Noah’s Ark. We’ve …

: Finished reading: Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray: What a …

: Another book to read: Gal Beckerman, too, is interested in political talk. His new book, The Quiet …

: Rules: A short study of what we live by by Lorraine Daston | Book review:  All history is, it would …

: Ready to go.

: A German map of the Valley of the Kings, from the Bodleian Map Room Blog.

: the media ecology of college writing Richard Gibson: Practically speaking, GPT-3 and the like demand that educators reconsider the …

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: China wants to change, or break, a world order set by others | The Economist: Nor does Mr Xi accept …

: Michelle Nijhuis: Speakers of Luganda, the most common indigenous language in Uganda, don’t have a …

: I have several pairs of headphones, of varying quality, but FWIW, these are the ones I always reach …

: a change of attention After the killing of George Floyd, my first response — after sympathy for poor Floyd, I hope — was …

: Currently listening: Music for Saxofone & Bass Guitar: More Songs by Sam Gendel & Sam Wilkes …

: I just love this post by Imani Perry about how excited her sons were when she won the National Book …

: Tanzmasken

: Definitions: An accu­rate def­i­n­i­tion of “influencer” is: a vir­tu­oso of a par­tic­u­lar …

: A good overview of the value of deep reading.

: From a lovely profile of Will Arbery by Chloé Cooper Jones: One of the first stories Arbery ever …

: Currently reading: Albert Murray: Collected Essays & Memoirs by Albert Murray 📚

: low anthropology In my new essay on anarchism, I describe myself as “a person with an exceptionally low anthropology” …

: Nothing like listening to the Welsh sing their anthem. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

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: I’ve been predicting U.S. 0-0 Wales, but the power of Weston McKennie’s hair is (against …

: After seeing that shambolic defending by Iran, I might have to reconsider my prediction that the …

: Matthew Loftus: The Church universal also has a set of overlapping responsibilities, but how these …

: Barney Ronay: It feels like a theme park. There’s always been this ridiculous corporate circus, but …

: subsidiarity Dale Ahlquist: While the Distributist movement gained a much larger following than most historians …

: Currently reading: Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray 📚

: Charles Spurgeon: “I do not know that the prodigal saw his father, but his father saw him. The …

: Interview with Yiyun Li: Just as you were starting Tolstoy Together, you wrote in The New York …

: Ayana Mathis: When I first conceived of this essay, I imagined it would be purely literary. Then, …

: As an endlessly corrupt World Cup begins, the American college-sports-industrial complex says, “Hold …

: Ralph Ellison in his Harlem apartment, 1986 

: Mastodonic thoughts After a brief period on Mastodon: It’s exactly like Twitter. People have taken all their Twitter …

: Corner Club Cathedral Cocoon, by Sasha Frere-Jones: I developed a new way of thinking about how we …

: “Not in word list.” Sigh. It’s not that esoteric a word!

: Twitter right now is mainly about Twitter but also a little about Mastodon. And Mastodon is mainly …

: peaceableness It is noteworthy, and not in a good way, that an essay by Wendell Berry called “Peaceableness Toward …

: Currently reading: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison 📚 (Decided to save Solzhenitsyn for later)

: a right bollocking Well, this is surely Adam's best post title ever, but the post is really fascinating also. A key …

: capitaltruism Effective altruism is an admirable movement, and I hope it spreads. But one of my chief concerns …

: My prediction for Group B in the World Cup ⚽️: 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 🇮🇷 🇺🇸 I mean this. I think the …

: I would watch any NBA game called by Doris Burke (play-by play) and 89-year-old Hubie Brown …

: A student just wrote to ask me about an independent study, and my reply to him called it an …

: Just had the loudest, longest episode of SpaceX thunder ever. Every window in the house rattling for …

: Welp, I’m going in. If you don’t hear from me in a month, call the FBI, or a priest. 📚

: sprawling along the way: a polemic and an exhortation In for a penny, in for a pounding, I always say. I really don’t want to talk about the whole “three …

: showing You'll probably not be shocked to learn that I agree with Adam about this. My agreement is on three …

: Corvo I picked up The Quest for Corvo by A. J. A. Symons secure in the knowledge that I had read it …

: Wendell Berry: There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.

: Finished reading: The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by Les Payne. Somewhat disappointing; …

: two essays My Harper’s essay on (not?) becoming an anarchist is now online – though paywalled. But why not …

: Currently reading: The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by Les Payne 📚

: Newsletter!

: Ronald Blythe, age 100 Rowan Williams on Ronald Blythe at 100: “He’s somebody who is very committed to the Christian …

: a proposal Jonathan Spence, in The Gate of Heavenly Peace, relates that the great Chinese reformer Kang Youwei, …

: Currently reading: Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray by Ralph …

: rethinking work Cal Newport:  The battle for telecommuting is a proxy for a deeper unrest. If employees lose remote …

: Ian Bogost: If Twitter does fail, either because its revenue collapses or because the massive debt …

: master to master That’s the very early electric guitar associated with the great Charlie Christian, who died, …

: John Banville: The English language is beautiful. It’s immensely rich and untidy with so many …

: Don’t know why that book info has the author’s name in Russian, but it looks cool so I decided to …

: Currently reading: The Complete Short Novels by Антон Павлович Чехов 📚

: Thomas Harrison: Musil was not the only writer of his time to think of the essay as the method and …

: You Can Forget About Crypto Now: “Imagine your debit card suddenly stopped working because the …

: This Adam Neely video on the ways that intellectual property law is simply unsuited to music is just …

: Currently reading: The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography by A.J.A. Symons 📚

: Prediction: By this time in 2024, Elon will have sold Twitter to people who will pledge to return it …

: The most amazing part of this story is the teacher who says that he used to keep his smartphone on …

: negative worlds all the way down Here's something people have been asking me to weigh in on for quite a while, but I’ve been putting …

: On ne peut jamais quitter les Romains.

: And now, perhaps, time to reward myself with a little light reading?

: Just sent off my critical edition of Auden’s The Shield of Achilles to my editors at Princeton …

: stats Just a quick reminder that the use of statistics to mislead is a never-ending thing: The Guardian, …

: It’s what nihilists do.

: Pevearsion Recently I had cause to remember Gary Saul Morson’s devastating critique of the Pevear/Volokhonsky …

: Finished reading: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. Just as I had remembered it: brilliant and …

: Home invasion: For those of us who have been using Mastodon for a while (I started my own Mastodon …

: End-Times Tales Venkatesh Rao — End-Times Tales: We are drowning in a sea of reboots, reruns, and recycled stories …

: From a really helpful essay by my colleague David Corey: Some people I know worry that genuine …

: excerpts from my Sent folder: angels This is from an email conversation with my friend Adam Roberts about a recent post of his. N.B.: …

: Currently reading: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 📚

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: Very alien-invasion vibe to the pre-dawn walk in the fog.

: a parable Almost all of Tolstoy’s early stories were published by a journal called The Contemporary. Some of …

: being Russian A. N. Wilson, from his biography of Tolstoy (1988):  Being Russian, unless you are preternaturally …

: scale again Monday November 7 2022 - by Sasha Frere-Jones:  Scale serves wealth. “Scale” is a polite way of …

: audiences The Struggle With The Audience: By 2020, [Sam] Carter was a battle-hardened veteran of the music …

: Currently reading: Tolstoy: A Russian Life by Rosamund Bartlett 📚

: the foundering of the therapeutic A therapeutic church is an atheist church — Brad East: The more … a congregation becomes …

: Life at the 30th Street Studio of Columbia Records, 1955: Glenn Gould in the morning, Rosemary …

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: Glenn Gould’s 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variatoons was so popular that he took the Goldbergs on …

: Yet another reason to love Texas.

: eyeballs Since so many journalists spend most of their time on Twitter, it’s unsurprising to hear the more …

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: I keep trying to do the Todd Hido thing but it’s a lot harder than it looks.

: maybe this is the least important election of my lifetime Jonah Goldberg: “You want to know what I think will happen if Republicans have a really good night …

: Struggles to deal with being in the shadow of his more famous brother Bub.

: So our magnificent local Balcones Distillery has been purchased by a behemoth corporation. When a …

: Lev Tolstoy, born in 1828, had a daughter who lived until 1979.

: Currently reading: Interaction of Color: 50th Anniversary Edition by Josef Albers 📚

: the tongues of men and angels Milton, Angels, Mortals: a Story Idea | by Adam Roberts: This will be a very busy day, so I don’t …

: So much fantastic stuff in Sara Hendren’s new newsletter!

: It’s morning in America!

: summing up 1943 The following is the text of a talk I was supposed to give three years ago and didn’t because my …

: Current comparative listening: Pet Sounds and Revolver. I’m surprised at how strongly I feel …

: Hey folks: I want to auto-link my WordPress posts to micro.blog – not cross-post, but just …

: things poets do

: I’m sure you’re having a rough day, but consider this: You’re not spending it trying to read Auden’s …

: Ross Douthat: One of the master keys to understanding our era is seeing all the ways in which …

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: Sermon for All Souls by Jessica Martin Sermon for All Souls, 2 November 2022 Ely Cathedral, 7.30 pm Canon Jessica Martin NT: 1 Peter 1.3–9 …

: Last night at our local pizzeria, Moroso. So, so delicious.

: refugees from human nature Matthew Loftus: Our communities and households must be active in reaching out to those whose lack …

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: Why Ted Gioia thinks that victory, for artists, is assured.

: Currently reading 📚

: I’m doing a bit of blogging again, and about weird scholarly stuff – perhaps a sign that …

: Vulcanology Here’s a little offshoot of my work on Auden’s The Shield of Achilles. This painting by Piero di …

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: so let's chill Noah Smith: So, Elon Musk bought Twitter. Personally, I’m pretty sanguine about this development. …

: Re: my recent post on antisemitism, this from @lmullen and crew is exciting.

: Currently listening: The Campfire Headphase - Boards of Canada 🎵

: Re: Kyrie Irving, Ye, and others, this remains permanently relevant. Antisemitism is a pathological …

: If I were at the Emirates I’d teach people a song for Tomiyasu: It would be “Tomi Gunner,” to the …

: Derek Thompson’s take on baseball is similar to mine from a few years back, but he adds a …

: OH COME ON

: Dave Winer: “Why would I leave Twitter? It’s like living in NY and not taking the …

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: Trying a little experiment here, which I will explain in a future audio post. Source.

: Currently reading: The History of the Computer: People, Inventions, and Technology that Changed Our …

: Currently listening: Tinariwen, Aman Iman ♫

: Trying to do my part to show people A Better Way.

: Cognitive errors and moral failings A first experiment in microcasting.

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: this blog's mission statement Auden, from “The Garrison”: Whoever rules, our duty to the City is loyal opposition, never greening …

: I’m feeling thoroughly moskered.

: So close to greatness.

: Looking forward to this new podcast from my friends at Comment Magazine, featuring Shadi Hamid and …

: SO hard to decide whether to denounce the people who deserve denouncing or denounce the people who …

: Manton Reece - Dear Elon Musk: I agree that we shouldn’t be stuck in our own bubbles of …

: I posted an update on my Buy Me a Coffee page.

: Adam Atheist The other day I emailed my friend Adam Roberts and told him that I would have something to say about …

: My friend and colleague Philip Jenkins on The Great Vampire War of the Enlightenment.

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: Currently listening: ¡Ay! by Lucrecia Dalt ♫

: Richard D. Kahlenberg: “Harvard picks classes that look like today’s racially diverse America; …

: Ross Douthat putting the necessary question: As I argued in my inaugural newsletter last week, in …

: Every time Matt Yglesias bangs the one billion Americans drum, I have the same question: Where will …

: I am neither Greek nor Chinese nor a philosopher, but I do often try to go back to the beginning.

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: My buddy Austin Kleon tried to ask a question about “merch” but for once autocorrect …

: Finished reading: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt. Impressive in many ways and often delightful, …

: Riccardo Mori: “I actually quite like most of what Apple is doing with the Mac, hardware-wise. …

: Re: this essay on accelerated and decelerated landscapes, I wonder if we can think similarly about …

: Brad East’s rules for reviewing and being reviewed, are excellent, but the very first rule for …

: Currently reading: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt 📚

: Maybe this is just an oddity of my brain, but I find the Systems Settings app in Ventura …

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: On my first morning at Laity, I always walk to Blue Hole. But it’s 39° this morning so I don’t think …

: In these circumstances, a reminder: You don’t have to go there. You don’t have to do any of that …

: IMO, what this story points to is the difference between people who want to listen to sound systems …

: “Well, we’re the Satanic Temple, not the Church of Satan, because they’re awful.” From a terrific …

: Les Murray: Nothing a mob does is clean, not at first, not when slowed to a media, not when police. …

: WSJ on the Metaverse: “Among the persistent complaints from early adopters and testers, …

: ♫ Currently listening: Hermanos Gutiérrez, El Bueno Y El Malo

: ♫ Waxahatchee’s Saint Cloud was my faithful companion on my recent road trip. What an …

: Darwin Nuñez on for Liverpool. Bringing Darwin on is a … natural selection. #thankyouvurrymuch

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: Did I write this solely in order to use that title? You may well think so, but I couldn’t possibly …

: Me to myself: Do not enter. DO. NOT. ENTER.

: Finished reading: The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler 📚. I wanted to love this book but I didn’t. …

: Popular term for a beheaded person — disparaging, though, which I guess is why they won’t let me use …

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: Currently reading: The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler 📚

: I wrote about Jean-Luc Godard, whose ideas I think simplistic and silly but whose boldness I admire, …

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: C. S. Lewis, from “Lilies that Fester” (1955): The [student] will not get good marks …

: I know from long experience that it’s the hope that kills you, but I’m gonna go way out on a limb …

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: It’s Sunday morning in northeastern Alabama and there sure are a lot of guys around here wearing …

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: Sara Hendren: “But in rejecting the distorted and gendered version of small-s sacrifice, I …

: Will be doing my thought-experimental Reading the New Testament class again next term.

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: Now that I’m taking a break from my big blog and posting many small things here at micro.blog, …

: An extremely raucous murder of crows in the neighborhood this morning is reminding me of lines from …

: What an image. Among the silent trees a Russian rocket finds its resting place. (Taken near a …

: Currently reading: Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson 📚

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: Temple Grandin: “Some visual thinkers, like me, are ‘object visualizers’—we see the world in …

: Currently reading: Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance by Ada Palmer 📚

: Noah Smith: “The authoritarians of the world are already making a pretty good case for liberal …

: The Cineaste’s Guide to Watching Movies While Stoned. This was basically my life back in the day. …

: Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt: “One day, a government source informed the synagogue that we would …

: Alternate spelling. Pangram!

: “If these problems are intrinsically linked to consolidated tech giants like Meta, Google, and …

: Announcing a blogging hiatus – though I’ll probably be here at micro.blog more than in …

: announcement I won’t be blogging here for the foreseeable future, for reasons I explain here. I will continue, …

: seed funding for the arts The Nostalgic Turn in Music Writing - by Ted Gioia: There are a hundred non-profit foundations in …

: It me.

: Translation: “I’m not paying you to teach me organic chemistry, I’m paying you to tell medical …

: Bresson and the power of habit Robert Bresson’s films A Man Escaped (1956) and Pickpocket (1959) are book-matched movies, mirror …

: Esau McCaulley: How do we order society in such a way that increases human flourishing and limits …

: ♫ Currently listening: Time Waits: The Amazing Bud Powell

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: Stop Donating to Your Elite University - The Atlantic: “Everything we do in academia is based on …

: de-streaming ‘There’s endless choice, but you’re not listening’: fans quitting Spotify to save their love of …

: forming the public self When I read about what children should be taught at school about gender, I find myself thinking back …

: ♫ Currently listening: Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk. Fabulous record; the …

: Collections on micro.blog On the most recent episode of Core Intuition, @manton and @danielpunkass discuss whether micro.blog …

: unpreparation I’ve kept the links in this important passage from a sobering piece by Ed Yong: In 2018, I …

: homelessness Paul Kingsnorth: When you can no longer grow your own wood or cut your own turf to heat your own …

: ♫ Sweet haul from Waterloo Records today. Grooving to Delvon Lamarr right now.

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: it's all content Josh Owens, former employee of Alex Jones: I don’t think there’s a silver bullet when it comes to …

: As Qatar 2022 looms the US look like who they are: Concacaf’s third best team. Too true to be good.

: David French: When the Church leads with its moral code — and elevates that moral code over even …

: comparisons are odorous Don't Fear the Artwork of the Future - The Atlantic: What is so tiresome about the fear of AI art …

: fighting the good fight Some initial axioms:  The U.S. has some genuine conservatives and genuine liberals, but not enough — …

: The workshop.

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: the arts our country requires In a famous letter, John Adams wrote from Paris to his beloved Abigail: To take a Walk in the …

: “The Godfather is shit. But there is a part of me that loves shit.” — Jean-Luc Godard

: defeaters Ukraine Can Win This War - by Liam Collins and John Spencer: Two or three times a day I see an …

: monarchy Having written recently about the death of Queen Elizabeth, I’d like to call attention to some of …

: Made pesto today in this food processor, which is forty years old. I know old people like to say …

: “There are no dull subjects, only dull minds.” — Raymond Chandler, “The Simple Art …

: Sigal Samuel at Vox: The world has no real plan to stop the genocide underway in China. Some …

: name change I decided to change the name of this blog, for reasons that should be clear from recent and future …

: two versions of covid skepticism From a long, intricate, subtle, and necessary essay by Ari Schulman: The skeptical type I have …

: secret ambivalence In an earlier post I talked about how good Pauline Kael’s early film criticism — her pre-New Yorker …

: Donald Trump says that as President he could declassify documents just by “thinking about …

: Russell Moore:  Today’s American evangelical Christianity seems to be more focused on hunting …

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: Mark Zuckerberg Welcomes YOU to the Metaverse

: an allegory of American political life, especially online Dante, Inferno, Canto XXX (Hollander translation):  And I to him: ‘Who are these two wretches who …

: forking paths Deepfake audio has a tell and researchers can spot it — yes, there’s a tell now, but will there …

: Any word in The Lord of the Rings is a word as far as I’m concerned.

: Games, Mysteries, and the Lure of QAnon | WIRED: There’s a parallel between the seemingly …

: the dust that you are After the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, C. S. Lewis wrote to an American friend, You …

: rebellion against stability I’m not a huge fan of the music of Kelly Lee Owens, but I am a huge fan of this interview: “I …

: Look for my forthcoming novel The Queue Towers

: file-selves Sheila Fitzpatrick: ‘Man lives in the real world; but there’s also a parallel world: a paper one, a …

: sequence, 2 Read transcendentally stupid take online  Grab laptop, start banging out devastating takedown …

: my little soccer Recently I was watching an MLS match and a familiar scene played out before me: A player comes …

: Very much looking forward to Jamie's latest, which seems the natural — indeed the wonderfully …

: Hmm, a couple of Premier League games at 2 — I wonder how VAR will ruin them?

: Ken Burns’s ‘The U.S. and the Holocaust’ - Dara Horn: Burns has a soft spot for Franklin and …

: Auden, nature, history (A draft preface for my forthcoming edition of Auden's book The Shield of Achilles, with some images …

: redirect I love this from Tom McWright: A script that redirects anyone who comes to his site from Hacker News …

: Currently lstening to: Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue ♫ (It’s good to be reminded what an …

: sequence A: I don’t know, I think we need to get our own house in order before we launch into critiques of …

: shorts I have read a great deal about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and I have many thoughts — and a few …

: Le faux samouraï Criterion describes the film thus: “In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef …

: the King There’s a great moment in the Beatles’ Get Back documentary — the 9 January 1969 session — when Mal …

: how history doesn't work This is great from Freddie: The bigger thing for me, beyond the death of art and criticism I mean, …

: Currently reading: Their Finest Hour (The Second World War) by Winston S. Churchill 📚

: I continue to be interested in how the iPhone software handles low light, especially when using the …

: Blimp The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) is an odd movie, because it’s essentially an argument for …

: My friend Tim Larsen with an interesting thought: In all of human history Queen Elizabeth II is the …

: Joe Mangina: For a healthy balance between the apophatic and kataphatic we should look to the …

: introducing Six Books With Introductions Worth Pausing Over: Well, okay. Since I have tried to be a conduit for …

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: Currently reading: The Gathering Storm (The Second World War) by Winston S. Churchill 📚

: Robert Hutton: Had the Queen died earlier in the year, it’s not difficult to imagine Johnson …

: The rain did a lot for this fella.

: What the iPhone software does with very low light (don’t be deceived by the sky in the …

: Maya Jasanoff's idea that “The new king now has an opportunity to make a real historical impact by …

: I told them a while back that this is a word, but they obviously didn’t listen. …

: Currently reading: The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn 📚

: September update for my Buy Me a Coffee supporters.

: Elizabeth II: a constant queen whose failings were rare: “She possessed, apparently, the unique …

: God Save the Queen It is a truth universally acknowledged that if we do not suffer from our ancestors’ sins, then we …

: I know this kind of thing is totally normal now — one of the most characteristic ways for …

: The Woman Who Became a Company: Since corporations can claim trade secrets, [Jennifer Lyn] Morone …

: creating the Vernacular Republic Ivan Illich, from In the Mirror of the Past:  Rather than life in a shadow economy, I propose, on …

: the history of literacy Mary Harrington: We can also kiss goodbye to the “marketplace of ideas”. This might have seemed …

: Currently reading: Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War by Mark Harris 📚

: the final frame James Agee, the best writer ever to review movies for a living, was never better than in his review …

: An Open Letter Responding to the NatCon "Statement of Principles" – The European Conservative: In …

: Ben Domenech: Too much of a good thing is a real problem — and in its final years, Prestige TV ran …

: time out I’m going to be taking a little time away from watching the Premier League, because VAR is simply …

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: Currently reading: Awakenings by Oliver Sacks 📚

: the end of <em>The This</em> Start with Adam’s post about this podcast. In the podcast, Bill, Joel, and their guest Phil do a …

: Michael Gerson:  When we are caked with the mud of political struggle, and tired of Pyrrhic …

: Listening to: Mingus Ah Um by Charles Mingus ♫

: There’ll always be an …

: The-Sick-Soul-of-Europe Parties In 1963 Pauline Kael — a freelance essayist, five years before her gig at the New Yorker — published …

: Watching Eurobasket this morning (which is awesome) and I just saw a European sports website …

: Currently reading: Mike Nichols: A Life by Mark Harris 📚

: wait, what? I started telling people what a terrific writer Brian Phillips is back in 2008, when he wasn’t yet …

: Letter from Martin Luther King Jr. to Clarence Jordan and the people of Koinonia Farm in Georgia; …

: Colin Burrow: The original Yale Book of Quotations (2006), on which this new edition is closely …

: Stanley Fish, How Milton Works: To those in whose breast it lodges, the holy is everywhere evident …

: Currently listening: summerteeth by Wilco 🎵

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: I have always loved rain, but not until I moved to Texas did I really LOVE rain.

: Currently reading: Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark …

: 40-year report When I first started teaching college students, at the University of Virginia forty years ago, I …

: open letter Politics is exceptionally difficult. I mean, think about it: what could be more complex and …

: Barry Moser, St. Jerome and the Lion 

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: Currently reading: A Light in the Dark: A History of Movie Directors by David Thomson 📚

: quote unquote I have no idea what is actually going to happen before I die except that I am not going to like it. …

: How Moral Panic Has Debased Art Criticism - Alice Gribbin: Artwords are not to be experienced but …

: two quotations on memory holes, present and future Peering down the Memory Hole: Censorship, Digitization, and the Fragility of Our Knowledge Base | …

: Currently reading: Making Movies by Sidney Lumet 📚

: ELEMENT ANTYSOCJALISTYCZNY While I’m in Covid-induced memory mode… This is my beloved, circa 1981, with what I think is her …

: heads up Might be kinda quiet around here for a few days — I (finally) have Covid, and feel like a dim bulb. …

: Remembering Fred Buechner My wife Teri and I first met Fred Buechner in 1984, when he came to Wheaton College for a ceremony …

: speed revisited Consider this a kind of follow-up to my post from some weeks ago on moving at the speed of God. I’ve …

: Currently reading: And How Are You, Dr. Sacks?: A Biographical Memoir of Oliver Sacks by Lawrence …

: W. H. Auden, writing in The Griffin (February 1959):  For several centuries after the fall of the …

: An annoyance: Online security systems these days assume that everyone is surgically attached to …

: the publishing monoculture Why We Need Independent Publishers: The process of creating art and then asking others to assign it …

: “Repeated, long-term exposure to standing also has been implicated in the development of serious …

: The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed: Americans could learn simply to do politics …

: taste and judgment Re: Freddie’s post on the various ways you can like or dislike something, I wonder of this from …

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: National Parks Lifetime Pass? ✔️

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: I’m borderline-obsessed with these differently-angled straight lines.

: revisiting Saul After further reflection: I’m the mark. The easy mark. It pains me to say so, but I fell for it. …

: Lambeth Whither the Lambeth Conference 2022? I’ve been turning that question over and over in my mind, and …

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: Kubrick the idealist Diane Johnson, novelist and co-author with Stanley Kubrick of the screenplay of The Shining, writing …

: Incoming.

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: forgetting and propaganda Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: To the extent that propaganda is based on current news, it cannot permit …

: “Not in word list.” These people are barbarians.

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: liberalism vs. centrism, adjacency and action I’ve written often about philosophical liberalism on this blog, because I have a complicated …

: Bit of a scramble to get down to this part of the river, but it was worth it.

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: Evening coming on in the canyon

: change In this last season of Better Call Saul, we see Jimmy becoming more reckless in ways that seem both …

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: me to Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan

: Laurence Sterne, from A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy: Lord! said I, … — What a …

: Glad to see this thread – the badness of what is now called “System Settings” in …

: Masa tres leches cake, from Barley Swine last night. Would like to have more for breakfast.

: Currently reading: Some Versions of Pastoral by William Empson 📚

: tolerance In Defense of National Conservatism – Scott Yenor: National conservatives would have public and …

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: He drew a deep breath. ‘Well, I’m back,’ he said.

: lost causes and places of hope Better late than never, Ezra — props to you for finally coming around. But not many of your …

: liberals believe Stanley Fish, from How Milton Works:  Liberals believe that knowledge of an object (be it a piece of …

: heads up I’ve got a number of brief quote-posts queued up for the next week, and a couple of slightly longer …

: There’s a self-regarding preciousness to much of Donald Judd’s work — and to the whole town of Marfa …

: Taylor Dotson, “Unsustainable Alarmism”: Consider alarmism in the climate debate. Presenting …

: The Contingency of Listening - by Damon Krukowski: Albums are mixed in order to be reproduced. When …

: another friendly reminder Here’s the good news: Most Americans are not hateful conspiracy-theorists who want to destroy their …

: trolleys Every day, American politicians re-enact the Trolley Problem, and every day, they find a third …

: exhaustion, its causes and treatments I thought of calling this post, “You’re Exhausted Because You Don’t Have Enough to Do” – which, …

: a friendly reminder A year ago I wrote: “Wondering how to decide what to read? Here’s a simple but effective heuristic …

: Big the-Virgin-and-the-Dynamo vibe going on at the local Methodist church. From this angle anyway.

: Rain everywhere … except in the little circle where I live. It’s like we have a force …

: I always quit Spelling Bee when I get to “Amazing,” because I think it would go to my …

: Currently reading: Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston …

: This is extremely uncomfortable for me, but over at my Buy Me a Coffee page I decided to ask people …

: thoughts, nearing the end The shot above is — in context — one of the most amazing things this amazing show has done. If Rhea …

: Well, I’ve had more than enough of the heat, but this guy seems to like it.

: exousia The Greek word exousia (ἐξουσία) is one that develops in curious ways. In Plato its connotations …

: Albert Murray in his apartment in Harlem, 1970s

: Le Guin and forgiveness Ursula K. Le Guin wrote very few bad stories, but among those few is, surely, The Word for World is …

: It’s the cup of tea that just makes this one. 

: Photograph by Stanley Kubrick (1947) — taken, I think, with a Rolleiflex, because he used one often …

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: Currently reading: Science and Government by C. P. Snow 📚

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: two quotations on church James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time:  The church was very exciting. It took a long time for me to …

: enough is enough It’s been said many times by many people, but the state of officiating in the Premier League is …

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: "One Manner of Law," by Marilynne Robinson: Hugh Peters, most disparaged of Puritans, wanted to …

: Currently reading: Albert Murray: Collected Essays & Memoirs by Albert Murray – Murray was …

: my new spiritual discipline ... … is: watching Arsenal play soccer. For the past few years I have rarely watched Arsenal matches …

: The Southern Courier was published weekly from 1965 to 1968. 

: What is the meaning of ‘transfiguration’? | Psephizo: We are so used to speaking of …

: The New York Times: Born in Birmingham, Ala., Dr. [Freeman] Hrabowski came of age in the thick of …

: Incontestably, alas, most people are not, in action, worth very much; and yet, every human being is …

: Currently reading: Collected Essays by James Baldwin 📚

: violence and boredom Adam Roberts, from an essay that (caveat lector) is full of explicit violence: Be honest: when I …

: representation A while back I mused on a question: What do we owe the more-than-human world? It seems to me that …

: From a Polish performance of Krzysztof Penderecki’s Paradise Lost 

: decline and fall TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants: A very interesting post by Cal Newport. His thesis …

: Noah Millman: The popular series Stranger Things is meticulous about getting details right, but …

: Some lovely photos of the recent Laity Lodge retreat with Sara Hendren and Claire Holley.

: Continuing a theme….

: I love how my buddy Austin Kleon uses his newsletter to riff on and extend some stuff I wrote.

: That really was a wonderful meal at Milo last night. Corey’s cooking gets more and more …

: workspace

: A woman loving her dessert. A lovely woman who has been married for forty-two years – to me!

: incentives Consider this an addendum to my recent post on an influential study of Alzheimer’s that looks to …

: All forms of privilege — including the ones I benefit from — are morally dangerous, but I think the …

: feeling kinda like

: Currently reading: Israel and the Dead Sea Scrolls by Edmund Wilson 📚

: Wendell Berry: I have had with my friend Wes Jackson a number of useful conversations about the …

: Pablo Auladell’s graphic-novel adaptation of Paradise Lost is quite remarkable. 

: R.I.P. Bill Russell, one of the greatest Americans of our era — the best team athlete in American …

: smooth things and rough ground There are many links in what follows. I would encourage you to read this through without noticing …

: Sir Hardy Amies was for decades Dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth, and also, in his spare time, designed …

: building what looks right Eboo Patel: When I was in college in the mid-1990s—an era that feels quite similar to today—a lot …

: In those first three tries, I guessed one letter correctly and twelve incorrectly. ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ …

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: Not really where I thought Christopher Fry would take that libretto, but I guess that’s why he’s a …

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: "Charge of the Phone Brigade," by Adam Roberts: Is there a text from Nan? What’s up on instagram? …

: My colleagues Byron Johnson and Jeff Levin: According to the 2018 General Social Survey, 6.4% of …

: fish I’m trying to decide how much I agree with this, from the film scholar David Thomson, in the …

: the file system The Verge: “I grew up when you had to have a file; you had to save it; you had to know where it was …

: Critical research on the causes of Alzheimer’s may have been falsified — and as a result, …

: Currently listening: Bach: The Cello Suites — Recomposed by Peter Gregson ♫

: Yes, Social Media Really Is Undermining Democracy - The Atlantic: Social media may not be the …

: Mary Midgley, in a late interview: “The kind of thing that Paul Davies has dwelt on, about the …

: Finished reading: Space Odyssey by Michael Benson – one of the best books of its kind …

: Finished reading: The Railway Children by E Nesbit 📚 (first time in many years!)

: What does my home town sound like? It sounds like Waxahatchee’s “Arkadelphia”. It sounds exactly …

: Ross Douthat: “More Americans should live in the West, and more Americans assuredly will.” Yeah, …

: Mary Leng: Indeed, armed with a new toolbox of Latin names for fallacies, eager students all too …

: no nonsense For the past few weeks I’ve been watching the 2022 UEFA European Women’s Football …

: Yasmin Tayag: At this point, I worry about how much longer it’s going to last. People like [my …

: We only have one weather now.

: two varieties of human frailty Breaking Bad is a story about ressentiment; about a man who feels himself marginalized and …

: Subpar Parks

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: normie wisdom 7: politics Towards a Normie Politics - Freddie deBoer: The association with the mainstream and centrism in …

: To people who say that they need to repair and renew and restore themselves before they turn their …

: Currently reading: The Common Expositor: An Account of the Commentaries on Genesis, 1527-1633 by …

: How to Search for Life on Mars — The New Atlantis: Despite what it says, NASA has actually made the …

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: capability and collaboration In her book Creating Capabilities Martha Nussbaum writes, What are capabilities? They are the …

: Just playing around here … embedding a video in a post didn’t seem to work on all …

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: Currently reading: Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece …

: P. Frankenstein & Sons made a lot of things, including the space suits worn by the astronauts in …

: Via my son.

: the invitation to critique A while back, I wrote this: To make promises, to stand by one's words, to be answerable for them, …

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: the missing middle Pop Culture Has Become an Oligopoly - by Adam Mastroianni: In every corner of pop culture — movies, …

: One thing about this wild wild country It takes a strong strong It breaks a strong strong mind ♫

: I’m so happy about last weekend at Laity Lodge that I’m posting about it on both my …

: critique and repair in the canyon A number of years ago, when I was teaching at Wheaton College in Illinois, a couple of students …

: convo Me: Good grief, it’s just one thing after another. T: No kidding. Today the plumber spills toxic …

: A Love Letter to the Mountains: In The High Sierra, [Kim Stanley] Robinson is constantly shifting …

: L'aube de l'homme Ever since I learned from Michael Benson‘s excellent book on the making of 2001 that Stanley …

: the ultimate in entitlement I posted this yesterday and then, because I wrote it in a moment of anger, decided to take it down. …

: Andrew Hickey: [Brian] Wilson’s post-Pet Sounds career, like his pre-Pet Sounds career, is an …

: three versions of artificial intelligence Artificial Creativity? – O’Reilly: AI has been used to complete Beethoven’s 10th symphony, for …

: Andy Crouch: What I say to students is, you are not unhealthy people in a normal world, despite …

: Ben Shahn, The Alphabet of Creation (1954)

: Tom McTague: Being in London this week has been like having your home teleported somewhere else: …

: what's done Things without all remedy Should be without regard: what's done, is done. As regular visitors to …

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: LOST, NOT STOLEN: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election …

: Is there a more user-hostile website on the internet than Patheos? I saw that my colleague Philip …

: Currently reading: Collected Poems by C. P. Cavafy 📚

: Posted an update to my Buy Me a Dragon page.

: Om Malik: Instagram’s transformation into QVC is now complete and absolute. Instagram is dead — or …

: Sympathy for my northern European friends. (I could say “At least it won’t last …

: improving Education Doesn’t Work 2.0 - Freddie deBoer: Entirely separate from the debate about genetic …

: indestructible This long post by Jesse Singal makes one key point perfectly clear: People on Twitter may know that …

: My friend Chad Holley — lawyer, teacher, writer — describing a bold pedagogical decision: If it was …

: Didn’t think this guy was going to bloom this summer, but we returned from a few days away to …

: Andrew Scull: Vast resources have been devoted over time to efforts to intervene in, ameliorate, …

: Well hello

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: Small detail from Wildflowers (2017) by María Berrío

: At The Modern in Forth Worth today, I was totally captivated by the mixed-media paintings of María …

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: Currently reading: Beyond Nature and Culture by Philippe Descola 📚

: Ellul and anarchism This will be my last post this week — I’m off soon to Laity Lodge!  I’ve said before that I think …

: the two enemies I have come to believe that almost all of our social pathologies stem from two deeply-ingrained …

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: Tony Cearns

: self-limitation Here in McLennan County we’re experiencing a heat wave and a drought. Not altogether uncommon in …

: dehumanizing fun A provocative and disturbing essay by Josh Askonas in The New Atlantis: Many of the systems we now …

: Jemez River, New Mexico

: Currently reading: You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles After the Breakup by Peter Doggett 📚

: Paul Kingsnorth: Why would transnational capital be parroting slogans drawn from a leftist …

: How to prevent the coming inhuman future - by Erik Hoel: There are a handful of obvious goals we …

: Currently listening: Fleet Foxes, A Very Lonely Solstice ♫

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: Speaking of taste…. I don’t listen to many podcasts, but one I never miss is John Spong’s Texas …

: normie wisdom 6: fear I draw breath; this is of course to wish No matter what, to be wise, To be different, to die and the …

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: Chris Stirewalt: There are species of bacteria that actually thrive in the toxic emissions from …

: Bravo. Well done indeed, Economist. 

: Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume III:  “Whenever I was …

: Matt Yglesias: And I’ve been saying for a long time now that we need to get out of this rut. You …

: 📚 Currently reading, in a copy I acquired in (I think) 1972:

: A heartbreaking and powerful essay from Leah Libresco Sargeant: A previous surgeon had told me to …

: Vicente Manansala, Community

: Caro's LBJ After all these years, I am finally getting around to reading Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon …

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: Currently reading: The High Sierra: A Love Story by Kim Stanley Robinson 📚

: Paris Marx: The Amazon store experience, while presented as frictionless, contains a lot of …

: David Brooks: The great thing about humility tweets is that you’re not trying to show that you are …

: Elvia Wilk: While plants do not demonstrate ESP or identify murderers, the fact that they are to …

: If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line - …

: Andrey Mir: Digital natives are fit for their new environment but not for the old one. Coaches …

: Currently reading: The Passage of Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 4) by Robert A. Caro 📚

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: the sheepdog's view I’ve been thinking about the weirdly intense hatred many conservatives feel for people like David …

: Leah Libresco Sargeant: To give an honest accounting of ourselves, we must begin with our weakness …

: annoyance I like Independent Publisher, the WordPress theme you’re looking at, but I’m not crazy …

: Today’s harvest

: My iCloud issue: files I create on my iPhone take roughly 36 hours to show up on my Mac. This has …

: it’s the friends you make along the way

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: Iain Sinclair · Diary: The Plutocrat Tour · LRB 7 July 2022: Heading west towards Woolwich and the …

: New ways of war: Adam Liptak on Adam Roberts’s 2010 novel New Model Army — which, as it happens, I …

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: Currently reading: Master Of The Senate (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 3) by Robert A. Caro 📚

: Finished reading: Means of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 2) by Robert A. Caro 📚

: Finished reading: The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1) by Robert A. Caro 📚

: habits of the American mind The American Civil War was not that long ago. The last surviving Civil War veteran died two years …

: The Best and the Brightest I’ve been reading David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest for the first time in 40 years or …

: Blake’s savagely funny annotations to Robert Thornton’s The Lord’s Prayer, Newly …

: Brain Sciences | Is Reduced Visual Processing the Price of Language?: Abstract We suggest a later …

: two quotations on culture wars Ian Leslie: I have long thought it’s a bit odd quite how much people on the left love to bemoan …

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: Surely there’s never been a greater album cover. 

: Thus a more inclusive definition of Nixonland: it is the America where two separate and …

: weighing in, God help me Weighing in, yes, but doing my usual trick of trying to separate matters that get entangled in The …

: a friendly reminder In times of intense emotional upheaval in our public life, nothing — and I mean absolutely nothing — …

: [caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“1466”] Alpinia zerumbet …

: Currently reading: The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam 📚

: transcription I like this from my buddy Austin Kleon: A solution to writer’s block: Transcribe yourself — I …

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: getting what you ask for More familiar instances of toxic masculinity concern the wanton infliction of violence, especially …

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: Re: my recent essay on the dangers intrinsic to any attempt to create a monoculture, I think of this …

: I'll be totally fine if Arsenal don't get Raphinha — I don't think he's worth the amount he’ll …

: Freddie deBoer: It’s very strange to think that someone who murders a convenience store employee in …

: Don’t know why this guy stands more than a foot higher than his friends, but he’s …

: To say, as the Archbishop of Canterbury has, that the bishops at the forthcoming Lambeth Conference …

: Machenesque and Menckenesque From H. L. Mencken's obituary for J. Gresham Machen, the proto-evangelical: There was a time, two …

: Currently reading: Lucky Per by Henrik Pontoppidan 📚

: From Agnes Giberne’s Sun, Moon, and Stars: A Book for Beginners (1879)

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: Currently listening: Danish String Quartet, Last Leaf ♫

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: Currently reading: Milton and the English Revolution by Christopher Hill 📚

: self-understanding and resistance In The Gulag Archipelago Solzhenitsyn says that whenever people in the Soviet Union were arrested …

: Sonnet 61 (2016). Linocut by Rosie Fairfax-Cholmeley

: Currently listening: Willie Nelson, Spirit ♫

: Lambeth 2022 and African Anglicanism – Covenant: Whatever readers of this blog make of GAFCON, it …

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: It’s a newslettery morning

: bodies and stones In Breaking Bread with the Dead, I write about Donna Haraway:  There's a fascinating early chapter …

: From my essay ”You Are Not a Server”, on Dickensian characters: To begin to cite examples is a …

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: Currently listening: Aaron Copland, Appalachian Spring ♫

: I’ve just revised and edited the page where I list the major themes of my big blog and link to …

: Mosaics of San Marco, Venice 

: Remembering a visit to Sanibel with dear friends….

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: Currently listening: Wood Works by Danish String Quartet ♫

: less Tono, more Bungay After writing my reflection on Tono-Bungay, I read Adam Roberts’s thoughts in his excellent literary …

: I wrote about mechanization, illiberalism, and the attempt to create a monoculture. Part of my …

: Mechanization and Monoculture, by me: Indeed, it seems to me that the one indisputable thing we can …

: excerpt from my Sent folder: nodes I try to make the best of the blogging environment, but I have always been fascinated by Jorn …

: And this Yaupon tea pannacotta with fresh peaches and granola … I don’t even have …

: Odd Duck Austin is one of my favorite eating/drinking places.

: Currently reading: What They Heard by Luke Meddings 📚

: Learning a lot from this FIFA map. For instance, Denver is now where Bozeman used to be; Dallas …

: P.S. I ended up finally reading Tono-Bungay because, at a bookstore in Austin, I found a beautiful …

: Tono-Bungay My friend Adam Roberts has written extensively about this book, but because I knew I wanted to read …

: Silver Jubilee - by Damon Krukowski - Dada Drummer Almanach: [Maurizio Lazzarato:] “Small and …

: Currently reading: Tono-Bungay by H. G. Wells 📚

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: Stories by Thomas Mann, published by Equinox Cooperative Press (1934). 

: You always try to console yourself. Yesterday I said, “Hey, the temp didn’t hit three digits today!” …

: My friend and colleague David Corey: I share Fukuyama’s hope that liberalism can be maintained. I …

: A really fine poem by Adam Roberts. Adam is a man who writes all things well.

: artisans on video Just as there are an infinite number of reasons to seek God in prayer, so there are an infinite …

: sauce, goose, gander A typically and blessedly thoughtful reflection from Noah Millman: On both sides of the aisle, …

: normie wisdom 5: idiocy A great deal of survey research in recent years points to an important truth: That most Americans …

: book review ethics When my biography of C. S. Lewis came out in 2005, I was inexperienced enough as a writer of trade …

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: Sam Adler-Bell: Of course, many good ideas, theories of change, and histories of oppression and …

: From the Eric Gill Collection at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas 

: three axioms I don’t think enough attention is given to the three key axioms — typically unstated — of advocates …

: Heading on a letter from Maria Smith Giberne to Gerard Manley Hopkins

: In Times of Tribulation, Prophecy Books Multiply: “We are looking for books that not only try to …

: Rep. Liz Cheney: Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the …

: Squirrel wars escalating. I am injured but I persist.

: a proper goal Joel Lehman and Kenneth O. Stanley (2011):  Most ambitious objectives do not illuminate a path to …

: My “productivity system” is … a calendar. That’s it, that’s all I …

: Currently reading: The Women Who Saved the English Countryside by Matthew Kelly 📚

: my essential productivity app … is a calendar. In some seasons of my life it’s a physical calendar, in others a digital one (I’m a …

: When Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (later to be known as Lewis Carroll) was a child, his father was the …

: Currently reading: Poet of Revolution: The Making of John Milton by Nicholas McDowell 📚

: Art Chantry 

: "She's Funny That Way" “She’s Funny That Way” is a 1928 song composed by Charles N. Daniels, using the pseudonym Neil …

: Here’s a little thing I often think about: On “The Weight” Garth Hudson is on piano, and as each …

: How to give university lectures | Mary Beard: The second [lecturing tip I picked up from …

: Just ordinary morning light, that’s all. But I like it a lot.

: Pretty typical message to my wife, who’s in Alabama with family

: Currently reading: London: A Social History by Roy Porter 📚

: normie wisdom 4: quirky vs. basic Scott Alexander: Right now, our society demands you be a Special Snowflake. Women who aren’t quirky …

: What the West Got Wrong About China – Habi Zhang: The reason why China would brazenly “disregard …

: I wish there were a larger version of this response by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to an autobiographical …

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: Newsletter time!

: The other day I put on Richard Linklater’s Heads I Win / Tails You Lose (1991) — four hours of film …

: normie wisdom 3: two quotations on common responses G. K. Chesterton: The vast mass of humanity, with their vast mass of idle books and idle words, …

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: Currently reading: John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought by Gordon Campbell 📚

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: too good not to be true? Now that the semester is over, I am plugging away on my volume on Paradise Lost for Princeton’s …

: Seriously, these guys are just exploding. They’ve all been in this one patch, but now …

: One of many glorious wood engravings by David Gentleman from a limited edition of Swiss Family …

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: excerpt from my Sent folder: "September 1, 1939" In the end, I think, everything has worked out nicely; Auden performed the rite of renunciation that …

: Currently reading: Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World by Leo Damrosch 📚

: Friday 4 July 1662 (The Diary of Samuel Pepys): Up by five o’clock, and after my journall put in …

: contractual and unconditional love We know that when Dickens wrote David Copperfield he had not read Kierkegaard’s Either/Or – …

: From David Copperfield, Chapter XV: Mr. Dick and I soon became the best of friends, and very often, …

: Kyōsai

: not for me In a recent post that links back to an earlier post, my friend Adam Roberts talks about his lasting …

: There are men who always confound the praise of goodness with the practice, and who believe …

: The Woes of Being Addicted to Streaming Services | Pitchfork: I feel unsettled when I stream music …

: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” — Samuel Johnson

: I love it when former students of mine do cool things, and with this book Nate Anderson has done a …

: Currently reading: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins 📚

: ”The Sermon of the Wolf,” by Eleanor Parker:  For Wulfstan [preaching in the year 1014] diagnosing …

: normie wisdom 2: philistines A continuation of this post  Hugh Trevor-Roper doesn’t use the term normie, of course – his key term …

: UW-M Special Collections

: two quotations on what has been lost Could the greatest works of literature be undiscovered?: For two millennia, we’ve been haunted by …

: 14 Warning Signs That You Are Living in a Society Without a Counterculture: This is very good by Ted …

: The Architectural Drawings at All Souls College, Oxford: Wren and Hawksmoor

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: Currently reading: Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh by Thomas S. Kidd 📚

: Good to see these guys back.

: keeping things on my chest Perhaps the key theme in C. S. Lewis’s book The Abolition of Man is his emphasis on the importance, …

: I spend a lot of time just watching these guys come and go.

: brief hiatus This seems like a good time to go silent for a few days — to pray in silence. I’ll be back, probably …

: When I grow up, I wanna be like Pop. And you should too.

: Pete Wehner: For abuse to happen under any circumstances is gut-wrenching; when it happens in a …

: Reformation in the Church of Science — The New Atlantis: Fake news is not a perversion of the …

: normie wisdom: 1 First post in a series  When Hugh Trevor-Roper was a young historian he became friends with with the …

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: A festive harvest in the mail today. Listening to Wood Works right now and it’s utterly enchanting.

: Currently reading: The Code of The Woosters by P G Wodehouse 📚 – I almost know this one by …

: Rowan Williams: I have said that I think there is a strong case for the exclusion of the Moscow …

: Another dashed-off newsletter, though with some prime Wodehouse content.

: The heat wave on the Indian subcontinent is making the terrifying opening chapter of Kim Stanley …

: when problems aren't trolley problems A brief follow-up to my earlier post on effective altruism (EA): I have a feeling that what makes EA …

: my business That said, I’m not sure that this is an issue we need to spend too much time on. The genuinely …

: a story In my first years at Wheaton College I had a colleague named Julius Scott. (He retired in 2000 and …

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: Going around saying hello to the plants I wasn’t sure had made it through our cold snaps in …

: Robin Sloan: Obviously, no one does this, I recognize this is a very niche endeavor, but the art …

: Currently reading: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens 📚 – taking my own advice.

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: time I want to connect a post of mine from five years ago —  There are always questions. Which ones arise …

: points that don't need to be belabored We know — we all know — That people impose standards on their Outgroup that they never impose on …

: Ross Douthat is a brilliant writer and an old friend, but I wish he wouldn’t participate — as he …

: Finished reading: The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers 📚 Lovely to renew an old friendship.

: Puppets by Paul Klee named the Philistine, Matchbox Spirit, and the Crowned Poet — Source: Zentrum …

: The coming food catastrophe | The Economist: By invading ukraine, Vladimir Putin will destroy the …

: Quanta Magazine interview with Leslie Lamport: One last thing, about another side project of yours …

: Kent Russell: By accident of birth I am a modern, which means I will never know a charmed world. A …

: I very much enjoyed the recent Rest Is History podcast episode on Agatha Christie — and if you did …

: The Incapable States of America? – Helen Dale: State capacity is a term drawn from economic history …

: pandemic and biopower "Permanent Pandemic," by Justin E. H. Smith: When I say the regime, I do not mean the French …

: These beauties arrived: So now the set is complete: Had to do my review from PDFs, so this seems my …

: Finished reading: Anarchy and Christianity by Jacques Ellul 📚

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: Cory Doctorow: Writing for a notional audience — particularly an audience of strangers — demands a …

: notes Interesting convo at micro.blog about what people use to take notes. Me?  Handwriting in notebooks …

: For what it may be worth: As the years go by my opinion of OK Computer ascends and my opinion of Kid …

: welp More than twenty years ago Malcolm Gladwell published a fascinating essay about two different modes …

: this is your brain on shuffle Every morning — and I mean every single morning — when I awaken from slumbers, my brain serves up a …

: Currently reading: The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie 📚

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: Miguel Covarrubias, The Tree of Modern Art (1940)

: Currently reading: The Recognitions by William Gaddis 📚

: reification and metaphysical capitalism I’ve written occasionally here about what I call “metaphysical capitalism” — see the relevant tag at …

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: I was very interested in this Jonathan Malesic essay on how college students are or are not coping …

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: Currently reading: The Recognitions by William Gaddis 📚

: Self-portrait as I begin eight months of research leave

: Your periodic reminder from Leszek Kołakowski: It’s possible to be a conservative-liberal-socialist. …

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: on resembling the Angel of History Okay, so, first we have Andy Crouch’s book The Life We’re Looking For. Then we have Brad East’s …

: Yann Kebbi’s drawings for the movie C’mon C'mon

: nerves Well, the North London Derby will be kicking off in a few minutes, and my nerves are tingling. I …

: mapping the books I love this idea from my buddy Austin Kleon: not listing but rather mapping the books you’ve …

: bloggy A friend of mine wrote the other day to commend some of my recent posts for being “bloggy.” There …

: Just posted an update to my Buy Me a Coffee page.

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: ascending In many of my courses I ask my students to explicate certain key passages from the texts we read — …

: From a 1999 interview with the members of The Police: Sting: People thrashing out three chords …

: some thoughts on Tim Keller If you read Tim Keller’s books or listen to his sermons, some things will (or should) become quite …

: zine! Julia Evans makes really cool zines for people who want to know more about computer programming, or, …

: In David Thomson’s The Big Screen, largely a history of movies, there’s a chapter on television that …

: the speed of God Many of the key ideas in Andy Crouch’s new book The Life We Are Looking For emerge from his …

: mid-century modernity Over the past few months, I have been thinking a lot about the remarkable cultural transition that …

: Nick Russo: To wrap up his rowhomes project, Hytha’s planning to sell a collage of all 100 images …

: envelope please Tom Stafford: A slow day at the museum, and the receptionist is sitting at their desk as a stranger …

: Re: those eggs, once I tried Alton Brown’s way of boiling eggs – which is not to boil …

: Happy 92nd birthday to Gary Snyder pic.twitter.com/At40v7B4l7 — Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) May 8, …

: Jacques Pépin calls this dish Eggs Jeannette, after his mother, because she would always make them …

: Edward Heathcote, with a piece that provides an interesting counterpoint to my recent post on a …

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: “Another Green World," by Jessica Camille Aguirre: NASA has also dabbled in space …

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: “The problem with my life is that I’ve said too much shit in the past and no one forgets it.” — …

: Pop Culture Has Become an Oligopoly - by Adam Mastroianni: We haven’t fully reckoned with what the …

: Last day in my Reading the New Testament class – a semester-long thought experiment in trying …

: Happy 83rd birthday to the McDonald Observatory! 

: the old women of Nishapur Talal Asad: My point is simply that when a capability is acquired there is no longer a temporal …

: Barbara Graziosi: Strong readings of the Iliad tend to focus on the final encounter between …

: making a difference This is one of those I-want-to-think-further-about-this posts.  A couple of years ago, Shoshana …

: Currently reading: The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies by David Thomson 📚

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: Andrey Mir (note Mir's definition: "Postjournalism is journalism that is economically forced to take …

: Currently reading: Death and the King’s Horseman: A Play by Wole Soyinka 📚 (I’ve been …

: My newsletter is intermittent these days, but here’s a new issue.

: the glazing of eyes The older I get, the more common this experience becomes: finding that I am simply unable to read …

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: Andy Crouch on invitation and repair From Andy Crouch’s new book: To rebuild households would begin to undermine Mammon itself. If we …

: Currently reading: The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation by …

: The Economist: Migration into the state has remained steady for a decade (it is the number leaving …

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: a memory At UVA, they’re stripping Alderman Library pretty much down to the frame, which may mean that this …

: DNA B. D. McClay: It’s natural to find the thought that what we build in our life will die with us …

: This is gonna be fun

: I estimate that 73% of my RSS feed is stories about Twitter. Enough is enough, folks!

: uniqueness Ernst Cassirer’s An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture is essentially …

: Academics think a public intellectual is an academic who comments on current events. Journalists …

: Happy birthday to Willie Nelson, 89 years young today. Smoke ’em if you got ’em. The Texas Monthly …

: Skyscraper Skyscraper (1959) is a 20-minute documentary film — mainly in black-and-white, though color enters …

: Currently reading: A History of Christian Missions by Stephen Neill 📚

: Thanks for the kind words on my post, folks!

: I generally dislike unsolicited advice, but over at my macro blog I wrote a post offering some …

: a bit of advice Elon Musk’s imminent purchase of Twitter has a good many people scurrying for the exits, and some of …

: “You can't see it so I help you” There’s a lot going on in Edward Yang’s masterful Yi Yi (2000), but I just want to focus on one …

: Currently reading: Picture by Lillian Ross 📚

: I was so annoyed by the size and heft of my iPhone 13 Pro that I traded it to my son for an SE …

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: department of corrections My friend Joe Mangina — who, unlike me, is a real theologian — has written to correct something I …

: [caption id=“attachment_42113” align=“aligncenter” width=“946”] …

: DBH: [T]he religion historically called “Christianity” is not a “truth” that exists among and in …

: Watching Scott Alexander try unsuccessfully to grapple with Lacanian thought reminds me of the …

: Alexander Stern on "The Technocrat’s Dilemma": The technocratic response to misinformation and …

: Elon Musk could become the world’s greatest hero by buying Twitter and then immediately shutting it …

: Craig Mod: I wish you all — all of you reading this — could teleport here right now, right in this …

: Xiaoxiao Xu

: this and that I am working on some things that will (I hope) be significant additions to my Invitation & …

: Hummingbird clearwing moth visiting my patio – couldn’t get a sharp photo though.

: a tiny rant Recently I listened to a highly-regarded political podcast in which some of the participants …