Why I Unfollowed You on Instagram
Why I Unfollowed You on Instagram
This is remarkable: a collection of buzzwords where a human being (presumably) used to be. This is someone who with perfect seriousness refers to Pocket as the place “where I consume my link curation,” and who wants a service that “leverages a white-list of great curators.” He also says things like, “I’ve found hiring these tools for the specific tasks they’re best at has extended their relevance to me by amplifying their value,” and describes online life as “Person -> Person, Brand -> Person, Person -> Brand.” The debasement of thought and language and personhood is so absolute it’s almost admirable.
[gallery columns=“1” size=“full” ids=“17627”]
nemfrog:Relative visibility of colors at a distance _Graphic presentation_ 1939This is important.
It is illustrated in the experience of almost all ethical doctrines and religious creeds. They are all full of meaning and vitality to those who originate them, and to the direct disciples of the originators. Their meaning continues to be felt in undiminished strength, and is perhaps brought out into even fuller consciousness, so long as the struggle lasts to give the doctrine or creed an ascendency over other creeds. At last it either prevails, and becomes the general opinion, or its progress stops; it keeps possession of the ground it has gained, but ceases to spread further. When either of these results has become apparent, controversy on the subject flags, and gradually dies away. The doctrine has taken its place, if not as a received opinion, as one of the admitted sects or divisions of opinion: those who hold it have generally inherited, not adopted it; and conversion from one of these doctrines to another, being now an exceptional fact, occupies little place in the thoughts of their professors. Instead of being, as at first, constantly on the alert either to defend themselves against the world, or to bring the world over to them, they have subsided into acquiescence, and neither listen, when they can help it, to arguments against their creed, nor trouble dissentients (if there be such) with arguments in its favour. From this time may usually be dated the decline in the living power of the doctrine.
[gallery] Typewriter Revolution
Dialogue on Democracy
Over at The American Conservative, I’ve been posting, in installments, a dialogue on democracy — more specifically, on whether democracy is a failed experiment:
For better or worse, this will be going on for a while. And I think it’ll follow a pretty interesting path.
Since the 1980s I’ve been reading predictions that soon, very soon, intelligent and responsive machines will converse with us in our own language. I think not. I predict that future devices will be programmed by the same sort of people who now write scripts for elevators and self-checkout machines. It won’t be the Dilberts who program our robots; it will be the Wallys.
The Dilberts are busy writing sophisticated code to make Volkswagen diesel-emission controls operate only in laboratory tests. The programming of devices that interact with ordinary users like us will be left to the Wallys.
[gallery] Speaking of Elena Ferrante … A month or so after completing her Neapolitan tetralogy I’m still thinking, every day, about these books. It’s a mug’s game to guess about the ebbs and flows of literary reputation, the formation and alteration of canons, but I can’t keep myself from thinking: This is the Tolstoy of our time. The story of Lenu and Lila has that same curious quality Tolstoy’s great novels have: a calm and absolute assurance that makes their events and people seem preternaturally real.
On Wednesday, Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You, which won Amazon’s book of the year award, simply tweeted a request to teachers not to assign emails to authors. In a series of explanatory tweets to angry users, who tweeted to chide her for being ‘selfish’ and tell her that students should stop reading her book, Ng patiently explained that a teacher required students to obtain a quote from her in order to receive full credit….To expect Ng to respond to the emails of 30 students is ridiculous. Instead of demanding a response or pressuring an author to respond by docking a student’s grade, perhaps it’s best to just go back to old-fashioned research.
Celeste Ng is right: authors shouldn’t feel forced to respond to readers | Books | The Guardian. No freaking kidding. And I suspect the people who are lashing out at Ng for not wanting to be swamped by demanding emails are the very same people who are outraged at how slowly George R. R. Martin is writing. There seem to be a good many readers who want writers to (a) always be writing and (b) always be available.
But not only is George R. R. Martin not your bitch, Celeste Ng isn’t your bitch either — no writer is.
If a writer writes a book, and a reader buys and reads that book, the transaction is complete. Something has been offered; that something has been received. A writer has no obligation to answer emails, sign books, or write more books. If he or she does those things, wonderful — but none of them is a duty.
I like Elena Ferrante’s way of being a writer: she does nothing for us except produce great books. She refrains from participating in the social elements of modern authorship — except for the occasional email interview — because she feels that anonymity and reticence preserve her ability to write honestly, with integrity, and without apology. As her devoted reader, I call that a damned good deal.
[gallery] lawrenceleemagnuson:
Lawren Harris (1885-1970)
Lake Harbour, South Shore, Baffin Island, Morning (1930)
oil on beaverboard 30.2 × 38.2 cm
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
“A Thank-You Note, to Be Accompanied with Lyre,” Brett Foster
portraitoftheartistasayoungman:
I have spent only three days here so far,
and have been gut-sick the entire time,
but I’ve managed to write three poems
I think I can live with, poems about living
and the other option. I hope I can live
with them. Besieged by adversities, I give
Praise to Somebody for sweet verse’s
irresistible remedies, and so much more.
What more can an invalid ask for?
A fourth poem, you ask? Well, here it is.
At least let’s praise art’s ancient deities.
While Euripides staged tragedies in Athens,
raging reminders of our sad entanglements,
these Pan-foot gods were making merry,
cavorting in their floral dances, alive forever,
plagueless in the wide fields of Arcady.