Alan Jacobs

Marian Evans (George Eliot), from a letter to Charles Bray in 1859:

I have had heart-cutting experience that opinions are a poor cement between human souls; and the only effect I ardently long to produce by my writings, is that those who read them should be better able to imagine and to feel the pains and the joys of those who differ from themselves in everything but the broad fact of being struggling erring human creatures.

Mary Delany, paper mosaic. Ca. 1775

A decade ago, I wrote an essay about what seemed to me a strange development: the centrality of literature to many people’s Christian faith. I still think about how odd it is that thousands or even millions of people owe their faith not to pastors and sermons and churches, but to novelists and poets.

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

On my big blog as a Mathom-house.

I’m always negotiating the relationship between micro.blog and my big blog, but I’m getting closer to a system in which micro.blog is a box of delights and the big blog is a Memex. Gonna try to stick with that model.

I despise Man City, but Rodri’s Ballon d’Or is absolutely deserved. He’s been the best player in the world for two or three years now.

Nick Heer: “If software is judged by the difference between what it is actually capable of compared to what it promises, Siri is unquestionably the worst built-in iOS application.” Has been true for more than a decade, will probably continue to be true for another decade.

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