Alan Jacobs

I like this from my buddy Austin Kleon: A solution to writer’s block: Transcribe yourself — I do something similar, though not for writer’s block, because that’s an affliction I have never experienced. (“More’s the pity,” some of you are saying.) I use dictation as a means of generating unfiltered ideas, and transcription of the audio files as a way of filtering the ideas I’ve generated.

But I don’t use my phone. I use this:

Why use a separate device when I could use my phone? Because this thing ain’t connected to the internet. When I’m sitting down to do some serious reading, I don’t want any internet-connected device within reach. If I have a thought about something in a book, I grab this little recorder, note the book and the page, and briefly describe the idea. Sometimes I read a relevant passage into the mic.

Many people want a way of recording ideas that has less friction — for instance, they want a device that will transcribe their spoken thoughts for them. There are times when I use such services (Dragon is great), but I avoid them in my idea-generating phase because I think friction is my friend. It helps me a lot to have my thoughts on a device that I just have to listen to. When I do my weekly review sessions, usually on Monday mornings, I go through all the little audio files I’ve recorded in the past week to listen for ideas that have some value. Then I type out clarified and condensed versions of them, which makes them usable for essays or posts. Again: unfiltered recording, filtered transcription.

More familiar instances of toxic masculinity concern the wanton infliction of violence, especially the sexual kind, especially upon women and girls. Yet on the other side of the wall was, it seems, another sort of toxic masculinity — a platoon of armed and trained men who had evidently come to rely so heavily on guns and armor in lieu of courage and strength that they found themselves bereft of the latter when outdone in the former. Instead they were beset by cowardice, evidently as convinced as the shooter was that the gun really does make the man, and that outgunned is thus as good as outmanned.

In its own imagination, Texas is the land of men who would never admit defeat at all, much less surrender instantly with decent odds and innocent lives at stake: Surely its police ought to feel the highest and noblest sort of calling to valor, the type of vocation that surpasses profession and speaks to a person’s mission in life. Or perhaps those things, too, all the militarism and bravado, the heady authority and free respect, the unearned certainty in one’s own capacities provoked by so many Punisher bumper stickers and decals, had the same corrupting effect as the guns and body armor. Eventually, one either develops their own virtues or finds they’ve developed vices instead.

— Elizabeth Bruenig. The only thing worse, for a community, than what Radley Balko has famously called the “warrior cop” is a bunch of people who are cosplaying warrior cops.

Balko has often over the years pointed to the recruitment strategies of police departments, which commonly feature images of men in body armor riding in military assault vehicles. When your recruiting strategy targets people who get excited by that kind of thing, you get what you ask for — instead of, for instance, finding people who take satisfaction in serving and protecting the community. But even if you get emotionally immature recruits, you can train them in better ways. Alas, as Bruenig suggests, at places like Uvalde the emphasis seems to be on exacerbating their recruits’ vices rather than cultivating their virtues.

You have to hope and pray that the shame of Uvalde will cause police departments around the country to reflect on the kind of men they’re hiring — and the kind of men they’re making. But the rot is so deep that it’s hard to be hopeful.

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UPDATE: Arthur Rizer: “So much of this turns out to be LARPing: half-trained, half-formed kids playing soldier in America’s streets and schools. Many of the thousands of SWAT-team members in this country don’t have the training and expertise to respond like they’re SEAL Team 6. It’s time to stop pretending that they do.”

Re: my recent essay on the dangers intrinsic to any attempt to create a monoculture, I think of this passage from Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle describing what happens to an apparatchik named (ironically enough) Innokenty Volodin after he has begun to break with his formation and training by reading forbidden books: 

It turned out that you have to know how to read. It is not just a matter of letting your eyes run down the pages. Since Innokenty, from youth on, had been shielded from erroneous or outcast books, and had read only the clearly established classics [of the Marxist-Leninist canon], he had grown used to believing every word he read, giving himself up completely to the author’s will. Now, reading writers whose opinions contradicted one another, he was unable for a while to rebel, but could only submit to one author, then to another, then to a third.

Monocultures effectively forbid reading, in any meaningful sense of the word. Consider the “sensitivity readers” that publishers now employ to make sure that books don’t offend a favored group: one could debate whether such practices do more good than harm — I can certainly imagine the value of having someone help me avoid giving unnecessary and unwanted offense — but the one thing sensitivity readers aren’t doing is reading. They should be called “sensitivity analysts” or “offense detectors.” Genuine reading requires a degree of negative capability — a virtue that any monoculture (rightly, given its interests) designates a vice. 

I'll be totally fine if Arsenal don't get Raphinha — I don't think he's worth the amount he’ll likely command. I’m a little more positive about Gabriel Jesus, but honestly, not that much — I’m not convinced that he’ll bring consistent quality. 

Freddie deBoer:

It’s very strange to think that someone who murders a convenience store employee in a botched robbery deserves another shot at life but someone who, say, was put on a list for having “creepy vibes” should have that fact scuttle his chances at getting a job years in the future. It’s very weird indeed. The best part of the anti-police state, anti-mass incarceration movement is its wise recognition that we are all fallen, all guilty, and a healthy and compassionate society is one that opens up many paths to second chances and redemption. And I say that with the authority of someone who has done bad things and had to ask forgiveness in turn.

Don’t know why this guy stands more than a foot higher than his friends, but he’s impressive. Maybe eight feet tall?