Adam Roberts with a brilliant tale within a tale within a tale within a tale… I’d love to see more stories from Adam on his Substack.
Finished reading: Why I Am Not an Atheist: The Confessions of a Skeptical Believer by Christopher Beha. A very good book. More thoughts coming soon in The Dispatch. 📚
Kevin D. Williamson: “Negative partisanship is the third-strongest force in American politics, coming in behind only inertia and stupidity.”
A few years ago I had the honor of writing a little blurb for a wonderful book called Talking About Race: Gospel Hope for Hard Conversations, by Isaac Adams, the pastor of Iron City Church in my home town of Birmingham, Alabama. In the photo above Isaac is right in the middle, surrounded by other pastors in Birmingham who are part of an endeavor called United We Pray. Christians always say that want the unity Jesus promised to them — well, do they gather to pray for it? These folks do. I can’t be there for the gathering on March 15, but how I wish I could. I will pray from a distance but there’s no substitute for praying hand in hand. A meeting like this is a great sign of hope in a dark time; “For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground” (Isaiah 44:3).
Then last year something shifted. I kept seeing people express a longing for the old web. Before social media turned every thought into content and every person into a brand. Before the timeline replaced blogs. I felt it too. I started working on an open-source microblogging tool inspired by Jottit, but at some point I thought: why don't I just build Jottit instead?
Ah yes, I remember it well!
From Cadillac Desert I learned about some absurdly gigantic plans to move water from northern Canada to the American desert Southwest, among other places: the Great Recycling and Northern Development Canal and the even more bonkers North American Water and Power Alliance.
Re: Stewart Brand’s new campaign for maintenance, I’d like to add my own — somewhat neglected recently — project on Invitation and Repair.
WSJ:
Your turn, ChatGPT. According to the OpenAI app, Claude is “an earnest grade student who will not take a position. If you ask Claude, ‘Is this policy good,’ it replies: ‘It can be understood as operating within a broader ethical framework that may, depending on one’s normative commitment.’ By the time Claude finishes clearing its throat, the Roman Empire has fallen again.”
Gemini doesn’t get off any easier. ChatGPT calls it a “corporate intern with a search bar. It doesn’t write essays. It produces deliverables. If Claude is anxious to be ethical, Gemini is anxious to be useful to a product manager.”
Sneering at other writers? Can’t get any more human than that.
The newest issue of Comment, on the need for renewal of our institutions, has a number of smart and provocative pieces. Anne Snyder has done such a great job as editor of that journal.