Alan Jacobs

This episode of Invisibilia is beautiful and moving: 

I’ve previously described my writing workflow — and what I wrote then is still applicable today. Pandoc rules. But what about my reading workflow? Well, I’ve written about that too, but things have changed a bit since the last time I did so. So here’s the approach that I’ve been using for quite some time now:

1. I have a pretty large RSS feed — about 300 sites I subscribe to — and my preferred service is Newsblur. My preferred RSS client, on the Mac and iOS, is Reeder. So a few times a day I check Reeder to read the news and see whether anything of more long-term interest has turned up.

2. If a post or article looks like it would be worth my time to read, I send it to Instapaper. Articles and posts might sit in Instapaper for several days before I’m able to set aside time to read them. When I do, I use Instapaper’s highlighting feature to mark important passages.

3. Enter IFTTT. I use an IFTTT recipe to copy all my highlighted passages from Instapaper to Pinboard.

4. Pinboard is the home for everything I read online: its tagging and excerpting features allow me to organize all my reading, browse related items by tag, and search for what I can’t immediately find. Pinboard is really my outboard brain — the other elements of this workflow are just ways to get stuff into Pinboard. (I also use a different IFTTT recipe, along with Dropbox, to copy all my Pinboard bookmarks and excerpts to a text file on my computer. So even if Pinboard were to disappear I’d still have all that data, though in less usable form.)

This may look complicated, but it really isn’t: it’s just a three-stage filtering process, with IFTTT doing the handoffs. I scan Reeder to find out whether there’s anything worth reading; in Instapaper I read it; in Pinboard I store whatever looks like it might have lasting value. If you wanted, you could bypass Instapaper and just read things in your browser (or in Reeder), using the Pinboard bookmarklet to save items. I use Instapaper because I like reading in an ad-free, distraction-free, horrible-web-design-free environment.

Anyway, that’s what I do. I hope this description is helpful to someone.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“580”] an upcoming map booklet[/caption]

I hate writing on an iPad, and yet I’m writing this post on an iPad. Why? Well, that’s a long story.

My first great mistake was installing the El Capitan beta on my 11" MacBook Air: it totally borked the wi-fi. Any attempt to connect to the internet, whether a webpage or in an email client, beachballed – forever. Well, maybe not forever, but more than once I walked away from the computer for a couple of hours and when I returned found the beachball still spinning. Sometimes – maybe once in four or five attempts – if I reloaded the page it would work. I learned that if I turned off the wireless and then turned it back on, pages would load properly, but only for a minute or two. Then the beachballs resumed their little dance.

This was unbearable, so I reverted to Yosemite; a time-consuming pain in the ass, but a necessary one. I figured that if you download beta software you have to expect beta problems. I waited for the official release.

When that happened, I tried again – and had precisely the same experience. After trying a series of fixes, which worked … for an hour or two, before the old problems resumed, I reverted to Yosemite again.

That MacBook Air was getting a bit long in the tooth, but at work I have a relatively new 27" iMac. I thought to myself, I bet El Cap works just fine on the newer hardware – so I updated it (the machine was asking me to do so all the time, anyway). Did it work? Nope. Exactly the same problem. Fortunately, there’s an Ethernet connection in my office, so I just plugged that machine in and was once more good to go.

As I’ve noted, that 11" Air was getting a little old, and slow, and was ready to be replaced. So I decided I was going to get a sleek new 12" MacBook – and a couple of weeks ago I did. It is an incredibly beautiful machine; the most beautiful thing Apple has ever made, in my opinion. It’s a pleasure to look at, a pleasure to hold, a pleasure to use…

Except it came with El Capitan installed. And therefore the wifi doesn’t work. It worked for the first day or so, then – yes, beachballs. I tried the fixes above, and as before, they worked for an hour or two.

I have a brand-new, state-of-the-art, utterly gorgeous computer … that cannot reliably connect to the internet. I have now had three computers, three very different Apple computers, and none of them has been able to connect to the Internet on Apple’s newest and most “advanced” operating system.

We’re not talking about some obscure function here, some task that only a tiny handful of users might need. It’s getting online that my El Capitan machines cannot do. Apple’s forums are filled with people complaining about this, and there are a hundred websites offering suggestions for how to fix the problem; but of course, as always, Apple is completely silent about the matter. And we’re now at version 10.11.2.

I have been using Apple computers for thirty years – I bought my first Macintosh in the spring of 1985 – and in the past year or so, for the first time, I have seriously considered trying something else. Apple’s hardware continues to be the best and most advanced in the world, but the state of its software has, at this point, to be called disastrous. It’s not just the OS – Apple Mail is an awful problem, iTunes continues to be a complete mess, the massive deficiencies of Calendar and Reminders have to be dealt with by the use of third-party software, and about photo management on OS X the less said the better – but when you get to the point that your computer cannot connect to the internet you have reached something very close to rock bottom.

I am this close to installing Ubuntu or Mint on my Macs – and I say that as someone who knows just how kludgy and clunky even the slickest Linux distros are. But increasingly I suspect that the Mac is a marginal product for Apple, one in which they won’t invest much care or effort except to make things that look great (because things made by Apple always look great). I have zero reason to think that even a problem this catastrophic is one that Apple cares about. So writing on this iPad, ridiculously limited though the experience is, looks like my best option for now. At least I can get online with it.

… is hard. Evangelicalism is a much more complex phenomenon than many of its detractors, and for that matter many of its adherents, are willing to acknowledge.

If you have half an hour to spare, listen to this:

Tim Blackmon is the chaplain of Wheaton College. Listen to his message and you’ll understand, I think, why the evangelical movement — which is simply a movement driven by love of the evangelium, the Good News — can’t be mapped onto any of our conventional political categories. It is intensely local and yet wholly cosmpolitan; it is deeply committed to conserving its traditions and yet revolutionary in its social (and personal) implications. It’s a far richer and more complex thing than almost anyone realizes.

I’ve been using this for about six months, but I think I’m done with it. I like the simple, bare-bones design of the thing, and the very nice Fitbit iOS software, but …

• Battery life is already degrading. When I got it I could go about a week between charges; now it's down to 48 hours.
• Which is made worse by the fact that the plug to the charger (proprietary — I wish it were mini-USB) is delicate. It is very hard to be sure that the device is charging, and even the slightest jar is enough to break the connection. Several times I have plugged in the device, left it to charge overnight, and discovered the next morning that it hadn't charged at all. (The cord is also very short, which means you have to balance the device on top of the plug to keep it charging — if you just let it dangle the connection will break.)
• The iOS software is beautiful, but it has trouble remembering my account — I frequently have to log in, which means finding my password in 1Password, etc.
• Some functions of the device just don't work consistently, especially the sleep tracker. For instance, the last time I wore it all night I checked in the morning to discover that I had slept for 40 minutes around 11pm and then for another half-hour around 4am. In fact, I had slept through the night.

So all in all, for me, the Charge HR is not worth the trouble. It's in a drawer and I'm pretty sure it'll stay there.

On the Acknowledgments page of The Thing Itself, the new novel by Adam Roberts, there’s this:

As an atheist writing a novel about why you should believe in God, I have taken more than I can say from the eloquent and persuasive devotional writing of my friends Alan Jacobs and Francis Spufford, Christians both.

Well, one thing led to another, so... The place: Great St. Mary's Church, Cambridge (the English one). The date: The evening of 15 June. The event: A conversation about The Thing Itself and associated topics featuring

• the esteemed author himself
• Francis Spufford
• The Rt Revd and Rt Hon The Lord Williams of Oystermouth (more familiarly known as Rowan Williams)
• and yours truly.

Stay tuned for more details. And sorry about the title of this post, you can't actually book anything.

HAMLET What is he whose grief Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I, Hamlet the Dane. (Leaps into the grave.)

LAERTES The devil take thy soul! (Grappling with him.)

HAMLET Thou pray’st not well. I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat; For, though I am not splenitive and rash, Yet have I something in me dangerous, Which let thy wiseness fear: hold off thy hand…. Why I will fight with him upon this theme Until my eyelids will no longer wag.

QUEEN GERTRUDE O my son, what theme?

HAMLET I loved [insert name of recently deceased celebrity here]: forty thousand [fans] Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for [him or her]?

KING CLAUDIUS O, he is mad, Laertes.

QUEEN GERTRUDE For love of God, forbear him.

HAMLET ‘Swounds, show me what thou’lt do: Woo’t weep? woo’t fight? woo’t fast? woo’t tear thyself? Woo’t drink up eisel? eat a crocodile? I’ll do’t. Dost thou come here to whine? To outface me with leaping in [his or her] grave? Be buried quick with [him or her], and so will I: And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw Millions of acres on us, till our ground, Singeing his pate against the burning zone, Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou’lt mouth, I’ll rant as well as thou.

It’s strange that even while this controversy has caused so much grief and suffering, you will likely benefit from it, because you will study harder and learn more than you would have otherwise. I count Professor Hawkins a friend and I value her as a colleague, and I do not know what is happening. There is a dramatic contrast between media reports and the principled interfaith conversations that were happening in Wheaton long before all of this began. If it turns out (God grant it) that reconciliation with the administration is in the future, then we will have reason to rejoice. Perhaps principled protest will be required – I don’t know yet. Your and my civil bearing and Christian charity could have a role in bringing the best out of this situation. Please keep praying for that, and remind me to as well. Jesus was fully God and fully human at the same time. With his help (and with Muslim neighbors like ours) it is possible to be fully truthful and fully loving at the same time as well.

So buckle up, and let’s learn some art history. This could be the best semester of your life.

— Matt Milliner, God bless his hopeful heart.

Five years ago Ben Lerner, ­Atticus Lish and Ottessa Moshfegh had yet to publish any fiction. John Jeremiah Sullivan had yet to publish a book of essays or Rowan Ricardo Phillips a collection of poems. These and dozens of other young writers have found shelter in the Paris Review. What’s more, they’ve found an audience. In the past five years our circulation has nearly doubled. The review has more print readers now than ever in its 62-year history.

The reason seems plain to me. By writing offline, literally and metaphorically, this new generation of writers gives us the intimacy, the assurance of their solitude. They let us read the word “I” and feel that it’s not attached to a product. They let us read an essay, or a stanza, and feel the silence around it — the actual, physical stillness of a body when it’s deep in thought. It can’t be faked, in life or on the page. We see the opposite all around us every day, but to me, that kind of writing matters now more than ever before, — precisely because it’s become so hard to do.

— Lorin Stein. So why does the Paris Review have a website, then?