Alan Jacobs

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 15:58:05 -0500

Here is the first in a series of four essays on the Second World War: Why has it been so central to the American imagination for so long? And how much longer will that centrality last?

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 06:07:58 -0500

Freddie on “Our Poptimist Dystopia":

Aesthetic hierarchy of any kind has become the last obscenity, the one judgment we’re no longer permitted to make, because to say that one thing is better than another is to admit that better exists. And if better exists out there, in the world of songs and books and movies, then it exists out here for us too, in the world of our lives, and that way lies the intolerable thought that we might have gone too easy on ourselves. Anti-elitism is the snobbery of those who have decided that the glory of great art is not worth bearing the thought that someone else might have better taste than we do. So we haven’t democratized taste; we abolished it so no one ever has to come in second, so that no one ever must face the implied judgment of other people’s preferences.

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 11:14:09 -0500

That story reminds me that my old friend Ken Myers, who has interviewed thousands of people in his time, started out in radio as a student at the University of Maryland, where the very first person he ever interviewed was Johnny Cash.

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 11:10:16 -0500

TIL that when, in 1935, Gertrude Stein did a book tour in support of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, she visited the University of Texas and was interviewed by a student journalist named Walter Cronkite.

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 11:06:37 -0500

Nikolai Ge, Portrait of Leo Tolstoy (1882)

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 07:11:07 -0500

The first book published by Random House was a fine-art edition of Voltaire’s Candide, illustrated by Rockwell Kent (who also designed the company’s famous logo).

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 07:08:22 -0500

How Cecil B. DeMille brought the Bible to American moviegoers.

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 12:26:21 -0500

I hate VAR so, so much. ⚽️

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 11:30:03 -0500

The value of a papal encyclical — certainly for non-Catholics and maybe even for Catholics — stems not from the quality of the arguments it makes but rather from the quality of the responses it provokes. Leah Libresco Sargeant’s new piece is an excellent example.

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 09:22:42 -0500

I continue to be bemused by the sheer number of these AI-generated book-promotion scams — I get them every day. Most of them never make it to my inbox, which speaks well for current spam-filtering software, because they look more legit than spam typically does. This too shall pass, and I will be glad when it does.

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 09:13:57 -0500

Dorothy L. Sayers: Works and Days is now available for pre-order at Amazon as well as the OUP website. (It’s not yet on bookshop.org.) And the pub date has been moved up to September 28!

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 07:52:58 -0500

Robin Sloan:

Basically, this is one of those designs that might not totally “work”, but the attempt is so vital and so valiant that it punches through the dimension of merely “working” or “not working” into some other space. We’re never going to bust out of the prison of the mobile-optimized, single-column scroll if we don’t try stuff like this.

I’m so glad Robin linked to this site, which seems to have been made by people who never noticed that the World Wide Web has been taken over by malicious greedy parasite-platforms, but instead just kept experimenting with HTML and CSS in much the same spirit that drove people to customize their MySpace pages back in the day. Maybe in my retirement I’ll become a CSS ninja and obsess over the designs of the ayjay.org world, the way some dudes my age obsessively build scale models of World War 2 fighter planes.

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 19:17:52 -0500

The USMNT completely unready for this game. I haven’t seen them like this the whole tournament. They are lethargic and confused. How is this possible?

Second half update: I could understand nerves, but this listlessness is inexplicable to me. I’m not sure these guys are even breaking a sweat. Belgium came ready to play, the USMNT came unready to do anything. It’s been a shocker. ⚽️

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 18:12:06 -0500

The current location of Penguin Random House:

Where Random House’s offices were located before a simple publishing house became a vast conglomerate:

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 17:43:55 -0500

Daring Fireball:

It’s one thing for Apple to force all of its own app icons into the same identical shape. That would be bad enough, because Apple’s own Mac apps are numerous and popular, and as the platform owner Apple necessarily sets the direction that many third-party apps follow. But it’s just downright spiteful to enforce it platform-wide. Apple decided they’re no longer going to create nice icons with unique, interesting, and most importantly, distinctive shapes — but they’re no longer allow third-party apps to either. It’s like Apple decided every single one of its own apps must wear a stupid-looking hat, and they put those stupid-looking hats on third-party apps too, whether the developers of those apps want them or not. Scratch that. Not hats but helmets. The mandatory squircle makes identifying apps at a glance harder in the same way that it’s difficult to identify individual people if they’re all wearing same-shaped helmets. Real helmets at least serve an important safety purpose. The squircles are like stupid unnecessary helmets.

This is a great rant because it’s true. It used to be much easier for me to find apps in my Dock when they were allowed to have distinctive shapes — indeed when Apple’s own apps had distinctive shapes. All of Apple’s UI design changes in the past few years have imposed a greater cognitive burden on users: the entire experience has become less legible. Using a Mac used to be fun; now it’s unpaid labor.

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 15:27:40 -0500

WSJ:

American allies have begun pushing the gas pedal on an unprecedented experiment in de-Americanization. Authorities from France to the Netherlands are quietly removing American tech from their systems, adopting European open-source software and urging civil servants to no longer use Microsoft Teams or Office. Belatedly, they are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to try to boost Europe’s own private space firms, AI companies, and data centers, to avoid leaning on U.S. juggernauts.

I’m not sure Europe/Canada/etc. have the determination required to become a third nexus of technological power, but I am hoping that they get there. It will be better for all concerned.

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 15:11:09 -0500

Currently reading: Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built by Gayle Feldman. Gonna be working on this one for a while. 📚

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 08:27:44 -0500

I asked for a latte from Starbucks but when I got home discovered that they had given me a mocha. So with every sip I taste not the sweetness of chocolate syrup but the bitterness of thwarted desire.

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 07:47:28 -0500

(it is funny, and telling, that in the current media environment a book published in 2011 may as well have been published in 1611.)

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 07:31:16 -0500

Here’s an interview about renewing the pleasure of reading in an age of distraction. Someone ought to write a book about that. Oh wait.

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 20:44:04 -0500

Currently listening: the Vince Guaraldi Trio, Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus. Righteous. 🎵

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 06:45:48 -0500

“I am 100% sure I am not a genius, but at the same time, I am 100% sure I am not a fool.” — Carlo Ancelotti. I’m thinking of adopting this as my motto.

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 06:35:28 -0500

Still slightly vibrating from that 🇦🇷 - 🇨🇻 match last night — one of the best I’ve ever seen. Cape Verde were magnificent: organized, disciplined, and utterly fearless. They came not to cower in a low block but to defend aggressively and take their chances. Wonderful stuff. ⚽️

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 06:57:24 -0500

To the tune of “Gilligan’s Island”:

Now sit right down and you’ll hear a tale
A tale of a rampant seal
Who’s damaging this coastal town
A hooligan named Neil

(via Adam Roberts)

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 11:32:51 -0500

In which I make a mighty vow: I pledge my blogging, my linking, and my sacred honour to the open web.