What makes the AI chatbots and agents feel light and clean, here and now in 2026? Is it an innate architectural resistance to advertising, to attention hacks, to adversarial crud? No — it’s that they are simply new! The language models in 2026 are Google in 1999, Twitter in 2009. Their vast conjoined industry of influence hasn’t yet arisen … though it is stirring.

the arrival of AI slop machines like Suno will dramatically accelerate something that’s already well underway, the widening chasm between live music and recorded music. When musicians recorded live in studio, the gap between that and live performance was very small; now it’s vast and getting vaster. And as Adam says, people will always want to experience live music — and perhaps will value it all the more because of the contrast to an increasingly slop-dominated world of recordings.

Something I believe very strongly, mostly from observing changes in myself, is that, once you’ve shoved your own hands deep in the entrails of a building, you’ve permanently altered your entire relationship with the world.

The images evoked of the great Irish rebellion of 1798 are poignant and moving. The population-tramp, priest, and peasant-rose up in its thousands against tyrannical British rule. They fought with pikes and farm tools against cannon. The men carried barley seed in their pockets as food on the march, and the following summer, after their inevitable defeat, the barley sprouted from their mass graves. A devastatingly sad image.

I do think the “path not taken”, of using this technology, in all its flexibility, as a lever to prise ourselves OUT of digital systems, AWAY from the internet, is a tragic one to miss.

Well, okay — what does it mean for a human to think harder? Reasonable people will disagree (and in interesting ways) but, for my part, I think it means prospecting new analogies; pitching your inquiry out away from the gravitational attractors of protocol and cliché; turning the workpiece around to inspect it from new angles; and especially bringing more senses into the mix — grounding yourself in reality. You’ll note these moves are challenging or impossible for systems that operate only on/with/inside language.

I’m now imagining that Netflix might insert into the home screen, every so often, key art for a movie that doesn’t yet exist. When a user selects that tile, the system meekly reports, “Oops, this content is not available”—not technically a lie — meanwhile tallying a vote for its production. Above some threshold of performance, a Netflix executive (or maybe it’s all software at this point) actually greenlights the movie, fulfilling the prophecy.

Creative work begins with an impulse for WORK, the kind of thing you want to spend your time doing, to which narrative and emotional material is quickly added.

many workers dream of doing something through automation that is soexpensive or labor-intensive that they can't possibly do it. I'm thinking here of the film editor who extolled the virtues to me of deepfaking the eyelines of every extra in a crowd scene, which lets them change the focus of the whole scene without reassembling a couple hundred extras, rebuilding the set, etc. This is a brand new capability that increases the creative flexibility of that worker, and no wonder they love it.

Most young people today feel, with considerable justification, that they live in an economically precarious time. They therefore want the credential that will open doors that lead to a good job, either directly or (by getting them into good graduate programs) indirectly. Their parents want the same thing, and perhaps want it even more intensely because they tend to be making an enormous financial investment in their children’s education. But those same young people also want to have a good time in college, a period of social experience and experimentation that they (rightly) think will be harder to come by when they enter that working world. Many people sneer at universities that build lazy rivers and climbing walls, and devote every spare penny to their athletic programs — I’ve curled my lip at such things a few times over the decades — but the fact remains that such amenities are significant factors in recruitment. Many students like them; they’re part of the [insert university name here] Experience.  Here’s the key thing: what most people call AI but what I call chatbot interfaces to machine-learning corpora (yes, we’ve finally gotten around to that) do a great deal to facilitate the simultaneous pursuit of these two competing goods. Yes, students understand — they understand quite well, and vocally regret — that when they use chatbots they are not learning much, if anything. But the acquisition of knowledge is a third competing good, and if they pursue that one seriously they may well have to sacrifice one of the other two, or even both. Right now they can have two out of three, and as Meat Loaf taught us all long ago, two out of three ain’t bad. The people who run universities understand all this also, even if they have their own regrets; and they’re not going to impede their income stream any further than it’s been impeded already by demographic realities. They will make the necessary accommodations to a chatbot-dependent clientele, because, especially when customers are scarce, the customer is always right. Those departments and programs that push back will be able to to do so only imperfectly, and probably at the cost of declining enrollments. So it goes.  And the kind of learning that Ted Gioia and I prize will still go on. However, it will primarily thrive outside the university system — as it did for many centuries before universities became as large a part of the social order as they are now.

One good reason to read [Orlando Reade’s] What In Me Is Dark is to see the astonishingly wide range of uses to which Paradise Lost has been put, and if I may be so bold I will add that it’s a reason to read my book as well. As I told Phil Christman, the poem is astonishingly generative: people can’t seem to read it without commenting on it, putting it to use. And as Reade’s story demonstrates, outside of its place in the syllabi of English literature classes, it is a book that people have often, as David Copperfield says about his own childhood reading, read “as if for life.” (Kenneth Burke called this “Literature as Equipment for Living.”)  Reade’s last chapter is about teaching Paradise Lost, and other things, to prisoners — that is, to people who aren’t reading for status or approval but for what they can use:

As the semester went on, I poured more and more time into the class, hoping to arrive at some new understanding by the end. When that came, I was exhausted and uncertain what conclusion we had reached. But the students had taught me to see something that I only realised in retrospect. As we looked at the literature of the past, they were respectful but not reverential. They weren’t reading in an abstract, academic way, they were reading in the context of their whole lives, as something that might help to explain why we had ended up where we were, and this was why they couldn’t relinquish the idea that poetry had something to do with the inequalities of the modern world.

• The story of the Winter Journey to find the Emperor penguins is by far the best part of the book, probably because “Cherry” is writing from his own experience instead of relying on the journals of others.
• It’s worth looking into the Cherry-Garrards. Apparently, they set up a field hospital at their estate for wounded soldiers in WWII.
• Main takeaway is the quality of person these men exemplify. These are the sort of men who fought in the first and second World Wars. They followed ideals and did what had to be done without complaint, yet they were smart and willing to give their opinions. They were strong believers in God (“Divine Providence,” they usually call Him), which is a testament to their attendance at church.

THE WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD

This post-war business is inartistic, for it is seldom that any one does anything well for the sake of doing it well; and it is un-Christian, if you value Christianity, for men are out to hurt and not to help—can you wonder, when the Ten Commandments were hurled straight from the pulpit through good stained glass. It is all very interesting and uncomfortable, and it has been a great relief to wander back in one's thoughts and correspondence and personal dealings to an age in geological time, so many hundred years ago, when we were artistic Christians, doing our jobs as well as we were able just because we wished to do them well, helping one another with all our strength, and (I speak with personal humility) living a life of co-operation, in the face of hardships and dangers, which has seldom been surpassed.

The mutual conquest of difficulties is the cement of friendship, as it is the only lasting cement of matrimony. We had plenty of difficulties; we sometimes failed, we sometimes won; we always faced them—we had to. Consequently we have some friends who are better than all the wives in Mahomet's paradise, and when I have asked for help in the making of this book I have never never asked in vain. Talk of ex-soldiers: give me ex-antarcticists, unsoured and with their ideals intact: they could sweep the world.

For a joint scientific and geographical piece of organization, give me Scott; for a Winter Journey, Wilson; for a dash to the Pole and nothing else, Amundsen: and if I am in the devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time. They will all go down in polar history as leaders, these men. I believe Bowers would also have made a great name for himself if he had lived, and few polar ships have been commanded as capably as was the Terra Nova, by Pennell.

When I went South I never meant to write a book: I rather despised those who did so as being of an inferior brand to those who did things and said nothing about them.

My own writing is my own despair, but it is better than it was, and this is directly due to Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Shaw. At the age of thirty-five I am delighted to acknowledge that my education has at last begun.

Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.

instructions from the Admiralty. He had under his command two of Her Majesty's sailing ships, the Erebus, 370 tons, and the Terror, 340 tons. [Simply noting that these are the two ships that explored the northwest passage and got stuck in the ice]

Whilst we knew what we had suffered and risked better than any one else, we also knew that science takes no account of such things; that a man is no better for having made the worst journey in the world; and that whether he returns alive or drops by the way will be all the same a hundred years hence if his records and specimens come safely to hand.

Antarctic Penguins, written by Levick, the Surgeon of Campbell's Party.

A war is like the Antarctic in one respect. There is no getting out of it with honour as long as you can put one foot before the other.

The plankton, which drifts upon the surface of the sea, is distinct from the nekton, which swims submerged.

From first to last the study of life of all kinds was of absorbing interest to all on board, and, when we landed in the Antarctic, as well as on the ship, everybody worked and was genuinely interested in all that lived and had its being on the fringe of that great sterile continent. Not only did officers who had no direct interest in anything but their own particular work or scientific subject spend a large part of their time in helping, making notes and keeping observations, but the seamen also had a large share in the specimens and data of all descriptions which have been brought back.

Those who wish to study sea life—and there is much to be done in this field—should travel by tramp steamers, or, better still, sailing vessels.

The usual custom at this time was that every one had to contribute a song in turn all round the table after supper. If he could not sing he had to compose a limerick. If he could not compose a limerick he had to contribute a fine towards the wine fund, which was to make some much-discussed purchases when we reached Cape Town. At other times we played the most childish games—there was one called 'The Priest of the Parish has lost his Cap,' over which we laughed till we cried, and much money was added to the wine fund.

”Under its worst conditions this earth is a good place to live in."

Generally speaking, a dark black sky means open water, and this is known as an open-water sky; high lights in the sky mean ice, and this is known as ice-blink.

Ship's company and landing parties alike, not only now but all through this job, did their very utmost, and their utmost was very good.

”Exploring is all very well in its way, but it is a thing which can be very easily overdone."

Of course we need not have raced, but we did, and I would do the same thing every time.

the luxuries of civilization satisfy only those wants which they themselves create.

Whatever merit there may be in going to the Antarctic, once there you must not credit yourself for being there. To spend a year in the hut at Cape Evans because you explore is no more laudable than to spend a month at Davos because you have consumption, or to spend an English winter at the Berkeley Hotel.

A Cag is an argument, sometimes well informed and always heated, upon any subject under the sun, or temporarily in our case, the moon. They ranged from the Pole to the Equator, from the Barrier to Portsmouth Hard and Plymouth Hoe. They began on the smallest of excuses, they continued through the widest field, they never ended; they were left in mid air, perhaps to be caught up again and twisted and tortured months after. What caused the cones on the Ramp; the formation of ice crystals; the names and order of the public-houses if you left the Main Gate of Portsmouth Dockyard and walked to the Unicorn Gate (if you ever reached so far); the best kinds of crampons in the Antarctic, and the best place in London for oysters; the ideal pony rug; would the wine steward at the Ritz look surprised if you asked him for a pint of bitter? Though the Times Atlas does not rise to public-houses nor Chambers's Encyclopaedia sink to behaviour at our more expensive hotels, yet they settled more of these disputes than anything else.

”Sweethearts and wives; may our sweethearts become our wives, and our wives remain our sweethearts,"

Barrie, Kipling, Merriman and Maurice Hewlett.

How's the enemy, Titus?" [I think by this Scott meant “What’s the time?”]

One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward; Never doubted clouds would break; Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph; Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake. #Browning

there was an ideal in front of and behind this work. It is really not desirable for men who do not believe that knowledge is of value for its own sake to take up this kind of life. The question constantly put to us in civilization was and still is: "What is the use? Is there gold? or Is there coal?" The commercial spirit of the present day can see no good in pure science: the English manufacturer is not interested in research which will not give him a financial return within one year: the city man sees in it only so much energy wasted on unproductive work: truly they are bound to the wheel of conventional life.

So much of the trouble of this world is caused by memories, for we only remember half.

Four hundred miles of moving ice behind it had just tossed and twisted those giant ridges until Job himself would have lacked words to reproach their Maker.

Birdie and Bill sang quite a lot of songs and hymns, snatches of which reached me every now and then, and I chimed in, somewhat feebly I suspect. Of course we were getting pretty badly drifted up. "I was resolved to keep warm," wrote Bowers, "and beneath my debris covering I paddled my feet and sang all the songs and hymns I knew to pass the time. #singing

the winds of the world were there, and they had all gone mad.

We did not forget the Please and Thank you, which mean much in such circumstances, and all the little links with decent civilization which we could still keep going. I'll swear there was still a grace about us when we staggered in. And we kept our tempers—even with God.

THE WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD

We slept ten thousand thousand years,

Thus Old Griff on a sledge journey might have notebooks protruding from every pocket, and hung about his person, a sundial, a prismatic compass, a sheath knife, a pair of binoculars, a geological hammer, chronometer, pedometer, camera, aneroid and other items of surveying gear, as well as his goggles and mitts. And in his hand might be an ice-axe which he used as he went along to the possible advancement of science, but the certain disorganization of his companions.

fleeter-named mate Jehu.

they [the motors] were the direct ancestors of the 'tanks' in France.

”the best sledger is the man who sees what has to be done, and does it—and says nothing about it."

Barrie, Galsworthy and others are personal friends of Scott. Some one told Max Beerbohm that he was like Captain Scott, and immediately, so Scott assured us, he grew a beard."

People, perhaps, still exist who believe that it is of no importance to explore the unknown polar regions. This, of course, shows ignorance. It is hardly necessary to mention here of what scientific importance it is that these regions should be thoroughly explored. The history of the human race is a continual struggle from darkness towards light. It is, therefore, to no purpose to discuss the use of knowledge; man wants to know, and when he ceases to do so, he is no longer man.—Nansen.

The Devil. And these are the creatures in whom you discover what you call a Life Force! Don Juan. Yes; for now comes the most surprising part of the whole business. The Statue. What's that? Don Juan. Why, that you can make any of these cowards brave by simply putting an idea into his head. The Statue. Stuff! As an old soldier I admit the cowardice: it's as universal as sea sickness, and matters just as little. But that about putting an idea into a man's head is stuff and nonsense. In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it's more dangerous to lose than to win. Don Juan. That is perhaps why battles are so useless. But men never really overcome fear until they imagine they are fighting to further a universal purpose—fighting for an idea, as they call it.

If you want a good polar traveller get a man without too much muscle, with good physical tone, and let his mind be on wires—of steel. And if you can't get both, sacrifice physique and bank on will.

There are no germs in the Antarctic, save for a few isolated specimens which almost certainly come down from civilization in the upper air currents. You can sleep all night in a wet bag and clothing, and sledge all day in a mail of ice, and you will not catch a cold nor get any aches. You can get deficiency diseases, like scurvy, for inland this is a deficiency country, without vitamines. You can also get poisoned if you allow your food to remain thawed out too long, and if you do not cover the provisions in a depôt with enough snow the sun will get at them, even though the air temperature is far below freezing. But it is not easy to become diseased.

To Sir J. M. Barrie

How much better has it been than lounging in too great comfort at home."

Exploration is the physical expression of the Intellectual Passion.

1. “Friends can be numerous and often met only if they may easily join and depart one another’s company.” Quoting Richard Sennett: “People can be sociable only when they have some protection from others.” (Also quotes Jane Jacobs here.) The Third Place offers *neutral ground* in which friends can mingle. Importantly, they are not in each other’s homes.
2. Third Places are great levelers. Everyone is on the same ground, both economically and personally. “Personal problems must be set aside as well… [the members of the community] relegate them to a blessed state of irrelevance. The temper and tenor of the place is upbeat; it is cheerful.”
3. “Conversation is the main activity.”

№ 51: How Not to Write a Hot Take

1. Where is anything related to this physically happening? Can I go there?
2. How can I test my hypothesis? If I were wrong, how would I know?
3. What have some people who are wiser than me and who disagree with me and with each other said about this topic?
4. Who has expertise in this topic?
5. Who can I talk to who has been doing something practical related to this topic for more than three years?
6. What scenes - as in a play - would illustrate this topic?
7. What in my life makes me care about this topic?
8. What is the most vivid personal anecdote that you can tell that would explain that?
9. If I don’t have a vivid personal anecdote about this topic, who would? What is their anecdote?
10. What secrets related to this topic can I find out?
11. What statistics related to this topic can I track down?
12. What institutions related to this topic exist and how can I get involved with them? (infiltration, interview, business records.)
13. Who has written about something related to this topic 50 years ago? 100? 500? 2300?
14. What fiction or poetry has been written about this topic?
15. What are counterexamples to the problem this stood out to me about this topic?
16. What else is going on that might be a confounding factor: what affects this topic?
17. Who can I talk to who has experienced the dire consequences of this topic, or other aspects of this topic, firsthand?
18. What community can I visit where this topic is being suffered or countered? Who are the key people in that community?
19. What adventure or caper can I go on to explore this topic?
20. What historical parallels to this topic are there? Who are those people and what are those stories?
21. What are the Golden Nugget quotes from interviews or other texts related to this topic that I almost certainly will want to include?
22. Finally, for a Plough piece: How can what I have uncovered in this investigation help readers to live as though another life were possible?

1. Enchantment - memorize and recite. Bring pleasure and exhilaration. [I’ve had students applaud after I read a story or recite a poem]
2. Recognize that there are elements to poetry that resist analysis

I wake and the sky Is there, intact The paper is white The ink is black My charmed life Harms no one— No wife, no son “The Bare Tree”: “There is never enough / Time to know another” - suggests the word “mother,” which Menashe doesn’t use.

The shrine whose shape I am Has a fringe of fire Flames skirt my skin

Thy will be done By crust and crumb And loaves left over The sea is swollen With the bread I throw Upon the water.

It is a grim feature of modern life that we treat downtime as a pit stop between bursts of usefulness. In the United States, where the Protestant work ethic took the deepest root, even Sabbath observance was shaped by the belief that unproductive time required moral justification. Writing in the early 1930s, Bertrand Russell warned that “immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous.” By 1948, the German philosopher Josef Pieper offered a more forceful philosophical defense of leisure. His book Leisure: The Basis of Culture, published in the wake of one of the largest labor strike waves in US history, pushed back against what he called the tyranny of “total work,” a condition in which the modern human is reduced to their measurable productivity. If leisure needs any justification at all, it can be found in the breakthroughs it enables: Darwin doing his deepest thinking during long walks at Down House, Beethoven composing “Symphony No. 6” in the countryside, Newton developing the foundations of calculus while on a two-year leave from Cambridge. But framing leisure in terms of output, or even as a way to rejuvenate us for labor, still reduces it to an instrument of the state or market. Instead, Pieper argues that leisure is a necessary condition for the soul. The Greek word for leisure, scholē, is the root of our word school—not a site of vocational training, but a space for contemplative stillness. Leisure ensures that “the human being does not disappear into the parceled-out world of his limited work-a-day function, but instead remains capable of taking in the world as a whole, and thereby to realize himself as a being who is oriented toward the whole of existence.” In the last few years, I’ve been doing a series called “Excited to Wear.” It’s my way of sidestepping the pointless exercise of defining menswear “essentials,” a concept that flattens the richness of style into generic shopping lists. Instead, I prefer to discuss clothes that excite me as the seasons shift. This spring, I’m drawn to clothes that reflect work and leisure—not as polar opposites but as parallel expressions of human wholeness. After all, spring and summer are the seasons for idleness, marked by bikes that creak out of garages and folding chairs that live in trunks. This list is about the clothes I like to wear for light work on warm afternoons and dawdling on cool evenings. It’s clothes for gardening, brunch, and listening to rediscovered LPs. Hopefully, you can find something here that inspires you for your wardrobe.

• Starts with a quote from St. John of the Cross (The Living Flame): “But they, O my God and my life, will see and experience your mild touch, who withdraw from the world and become mild, bringing the mild into harmony with the mild, thus enabling themselves to experience and enjoy you.” Rolheiser points out that mothers, especially mothers of infants, meet these two criteria: 1) They withdraw from the world and 2) they are in constant contact with the mildest of the mild.

The people who make LLMs have little discernible interest in cognition itself. Some of them may believe that they’re interested in cognition, but what they’re really focused on is product — that is, output, what gets spat out in words or images or sounds at the conclusion of an episode of thinking.

• We can sense that a room or building is well designed without being able to explain why.
• Architecture communicates to us. A large front porch can be welcoming. An unvarnished wooden floor will show signs of age and reveal its quality or lack thereof.
• In one Japanese house, the living and sleeping areas are separated by an open atrium, so that you walk through the open air to get from one to the other. You can never ignore nature.
• A good architect can make his building seem inevitable, even when it’s anything but.
• “It is books, poems and paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.” (262)

• “Besides, it was legal in a sense, for they were at war at the time, or just had been, or would have been, or soon would be again.”
• “Everything was singing, or murmuring, or sighing because life was so good.”
• “He had a strange, troubled, happy face as though he were always having very difficult puzzles set to him and always finding the answers.” <— I wouldn’t mind looking like this
• “There’s nothing I like better,” Edward said, “than to have my enemy looking for me. Then I don’t have to look for him.”

• Jock, the other brother, a schoolboy of fourteen, with a rough head and a voice over which he had no control, was still at the tea-table. He was rather ashamed of his appetite, but ate doggedly. "It's not that I'm hungry just now," he would say, "but I so soon get hungry."
• I want to grow old decently, and I am sure one ought to begin quite early learning how.
• It is wonderful how much news there is when people write every other day; if they wait for a month there is nothing that seems worth telling.
• You know about the dying man who told his nurse some joke and finished, 'This is the War for laughs.'"
• "I have, as you know, a general prejudice against all persons who do not succeed in the world."—JOWETT OF BALLIOL.
• Most people are weak when they come in contact with a really strong-willed woman.
• She had not been happy all the time: she had been afflicted with vague discontents and jealousies such as she had not known before, but at the back of them all she was conscious of a shining happiness, something that illuminated and gave a new value to all the commonplace daily doings. Now, as in a flash, while they waited for the door to open, Jean knew what had caused the happiness, and realised that with her own hand she was shutting the door on the light, shutting herself out to a perpetual twilight.
• Doing one's duty is a dreary business for three-and-twenty. It goes on for such a long time.
• Of all the things the dead possessed it is the thought of their gentleness that breaks the heart. You can think of their qualities of brain and heart and be proud, but when you think of their gentleness and their youth you can only weep and weep.
• 'How welcome is death,' says Bunyan, 'to them that have nothing to do but to die.'
• It's a funny world. It's a nice, funny world."

• megrim
• Poem: “In Time of Pestilence”
• John Splendid
• “Pleasant Town of Roundabout”
• “Don John of Austria”
• clatter-vengeance
• O take me to the Mountain O, Past the great pines and through the wood, Up where the lean hounds softly go, A whine for wild things' blood, And madly flies the dappled roe. O God, to shout and speed them there An arrow by my chestnut hair Drawn tight, and one keen glittering spear—Ah, if I could!'"
• The Gold of Fairnilee
• The Long Roll (Johnston)
• Cease Firing (Johnston)
• The Clipper of the Clouds (Jules Verne)
• Sir Ludar
• Rigmarole in Search of a Soul (Lord Brabourne)

• “There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that.”
• “The average detective story is probably no worse than the average novel, but you never see the average novel. It doesn’t get published.”
• “The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers.”

• W. W. Sawyer

No boy can afford to neglect his work, and with a boy work, as a rule, means study. Of course there are occasionally brilliant successes in life where the man has been worthless as a student when a boy. To take these exceptions as examples would be as unsafe as it would be to advocate blindness because some blind men have won undying honor by triumphing over their physical infirmity and accomplishing great results in the world. I am no advocate of senseless and excessive cramming in studies, but a boy should work, and should work hard, at his lessons—in the first place, for the sake of what he will learn, and in the next place, for the sake of the effect upon his own character of resolutely settling down to learn it. Shiftlessness, slackness, indifference in studying, are almost certain to mean inability to get on in other walks of life. Of course, as a boy grows older it is a good thing if he can shape his studies in the direction toward which he has a natural bent; but whether he can do this or not, he must put his whole heart into them. I do not believe in mischief-doing in school hours, or in the kind of animal spirits that results in making bad scholars; and I believe that those boys who take part in rough, hard play outside of school will not find any need for horse-play in school. While they study they should study just as hard as they play foot-ball in a match game. It is wise to obey the homely old adage, "Work while you work; play while you play."

• The actor is sensitive to the finest changes of emotion. [Why emotion? Surely there are other makers of meaning.] “She is like a violin whose strings respond to all vibrations.” A poet is sensitive to the impressions of words, a musician to the impressions of sound. The actor? Her instruments are her body and mind. Her body and mind are tuned to emotion. This is dangerous territory.
• I judged too soon. Boleslavsky is cleverer than me. Training yourself to be sensitive is the first lesson. The next lesson is recalling those sensations when you need them.

The transient nature of Japanese architecture, where a house loses its value once occupied, is rooted in practical responses to historical challenges like earthquakes, fires, and wars. What looks like a brick wall is rarely real upon closer inspection, evoking the feel of a Hollywood set. However, this approach to truth is deeply embedded in Japanese philosophy, where the notion of an absolute, universal truth has long been deconstructed. When Jacques Derrida, the father of Deconstructionism, visited Japan, he was told he had nothing to deconstruct here. Japan’s philosophical traditions have always embraced a “post-truth” reality, adept at navigating life without reliance on universal truths.

In every inch of England you can find the history of England.

Then I said to them as I left the train at the town I spoke of: "Days, knights!"—for so one addresses strangers in that country. And they answered: "Your grace, we commend you to God."

"Since we are to have bells, let us have bells: not measured out, calculated, expensive, and prudent bells, but careless bells, self-answering multitudinous bells; bells without fear, bells excessive and bells innumerable; bells worthy of the ecstasies that are best thrown out and published in the clashing of bells. For bells are single, like real pleasures, and we will combine such a great number that they shall be like the happy and complex life of a man. In a word, let us be noble and scatter our bells and reap a harvest till our town is famous for its bells."

Ely is dumb and yet oracular. The town and the hill tell you nothing till you have studied them in silence and for some considerable time. This boast is made by many towns, that they hold a secret. But Ely, which is rather a village than a town, has alone a true claim, the proof of which is this, that no one comes to Ely for a few hours and carries anything away, whereas no man lives in Ely for a year without beginning to write a book. I do not say that all are published, but I swear that all are begun.

I saw (when I had long lost my manners and ceased to care for refinements) that the French were attempting, a generation before any others in the world, to establish an army that should be a mere army, and in which a living man counted only as one numbered man.

In the process things had passed which would seem to you incredible if I wrote them all down. I cared little in what vessel I ate, or whether I had to tear meat with my fingers. I could march in reserve more than twenty miles a day for day upon day. I knew all about my horses; I could sweep, wash, make a bed, clean kit, cook a little, tidy a stable, turn to entrenching for emplacement, take a place at lifting a gun or changing a wheel. I took change with a gunner, and could point well. And all this was not learnt save under a grinding pressure of authority and harshness, without which in one's whole life I suppose one would never properly have learnt a half of these things—at least, not to do them so readily, or in such unison, or on so definite a plan. But (what will seem astonishing to our critics and verbalists), with all this there increased the power, or perhaps it was but the desire, to express the greatest thoughts—newer and keener things. I began to understand De Vigny when he wrote, "If a man despairs of becoming a poet, let him carry his pack and march in the ranks."

That soul which is capable of God, can be filled with nothing else but God; nothing but God can fill a soul that is capable of God.

Devils—both the lusty thickheads and the sharp, clever deceivers — are always clowns. Though they may triumph in the world of space and time, both they and their work simply disappear when the perspective shifts to the transcendental. They are mistakers of shadow for substance: they symbolize the inevitable imperfections of the realm of shadow, and so long as we remain this side the veil cannot be done away.

For a child to be open to being parented by an adult, he must be actively attaching to that adult, be wanting contact and closeness with him.

The attachment relationship of child to parent needs to last at least as long as a child needs to be parented. (6)

It is the thesis of this book that the disorder affecting the generations of young children and adolescents now heading toward adulthood is rooted in the lost orientation of children toward the nurturing adults in their lives. […] We use the word disorder in its most basic sense: a disruption of the natural order of things.

I shouldn’t need to say this, but apparently I do: all existing generative model products are unethical. I’m not talking about legality here. A thing can be legal but unethical. These models are built on people’s creative work, without their permission, and then integrated into products that directly threaten their livelihoods. Their work becomes a facet of the model’s output without attribution. This is straightforwardly unethical, irrespective of the legality or how the models work internally. You are using people’s work to destroy their livelihoods. People should always come before software and models are software not people.

You can do it too

1. Always be researching

• What are you clipping, saving, and writing down?
• What is a common theme or subject matter?

2. Know where you’re going (have a plan)

3. Use everything you do as fuel for something larger

4. Have something to

5. Make commitments

6. Work with great people (don’t try to do it all yourself)

• For all three of my books I’ve hired Nils Parker at Command+Z Content to edit them (which cost about $10,000 each).
• All three of my book covers, which I love, were created by Erin Tyler — which cost about $3,000 each.
• And even though I have my own marketing company that has worked tirelessly on my books, I’ve also hired a traditional business book publicist to support us in pitching legacy media — to the tune of $30,000+ dollars.

7. Link it all together

• My reading helps me write and be inspired to do great work.
• My book reviews on my reading newsletter help build a list that I can market my book to.
• My articles help with my books.
• My books help with my marketing business.

Remember … it’s all material

Never-Ending Man, a documentary that recently enjoyed a limited release in the United States, shows an exchange between the animator Hayao Miyazaki, seventy-eight, and a group of young programmers from an artificial intelligence company. The programmers proudly show ­Miyazaki animation of a “man” with a body soft as jelly—legs, arms, torso, head flopping like gummy worms—squirming and twisting across the floor, ­dragging itself along by its empty head. “It doesn’t feel any pain,” they tell their hero. “This is what we have been working on.” Miyazaki, a master of pencil, watercolor, and oil who has long resisted digital animation, is revolted—not only by the digital nature of the animation but by the broader contempt for life that the young animators express. He describes a disabled friend of his and says, “Thinking of him, I can’t watch this stuff and find it interesting. Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is whatsoever. I am utterly disgusted. . . . I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.” The programmers struggle to respond. The documentary cuts to Miyazaki sketching and mumbling to himself, “I feel like we are nearing the end times.”

"This observation, also, I have laid to heart, that they, who in matters of war seek in all ways to save their lives, are just they who, as a rule, die dishonourably; whereas they who, recognising that death is the common lot and destiny of all men, strive hard to die nobly: these more frequently, as I observe, do after all attain to old age, or, at any rate, while life lasts, they spend their days more happily. This lesson let all lay to heart this day, for we are just at such a crisis of our fate. Now is the season to be brave ourselves, and to stimulate the rest by our example."

I believe that no fairer or brighter jewel can be given to a man, and most of all a prince, than the threefold grace of valour, justice, and generosity. He that possesses these is rich in the multitude of friends which surround him; rich also in the desire of others to be included in their number. While he prospers, he is surrounded by those who will rejoice with him in his joy; or if misfortune overtake him, he has no lack of sympathisers to give him help.

When marching in the daytime that part of the army leads the van which seems best suited to the nature of the country to be traversed—heavy or light infantry, or cavalry; but by night our rule is that the slowest arm should take the lead. Thus we avoid the risk of being pulled to pieces: and it is not so easy for a man to give his neighbour the slip without intending, whereas the scattered fragments of an army are apt to fall foul of one another, and to cause damage or incur it in sheer ignorance."

The tents were pitched on the seaward-facing beach, the soldiers being altogether averse to camping on ground which might so easily be converted into a city. Indeed, their arrival at the place at all seemed very like the crafty design of some persons who were minded to form a city.

The conclusion they came to was to appoint a single general, since one man would be better able to handle the troops, by night or by day, than was possible while the generalship was divided. If secrecy were desirable, it would be easier to keep matters dark, or if again expedition were an object, there would be less risk of arriving a day too late, since mutual explanations would be avoided, and whatever approved itself to the single judgement would at once be carried into effect, whereas previously the generals had done everything in obedience to the opinion of the majority.

Xenophon, mounted on his charger, rode beside his men, and roused their ardour the while. "Now for it, brave sirs; bethink you that this race is for Hellas!—now or never!—to find your boys, your wives; one small effort, and the rest of the march we shall pursue in peace, without ever a blow to strike; now for it."

“Our common safety is our common need."

in case of defeat, the owners' goods are not their own; but if we master our foes, we will make them our baggage bearers.

After him Xenophon arose; he was arrayed for war in his bravest apparel (1): "For," said he to himself, "if the gods grant victory, the finest attire will match with victory best; or if I must needs die, then for one who has aspired to the noblest, it is well there should be some outward correspondence between his expectation and his end."

For without leaders nothing good or noble, to put it concisely, was ever wrought anywhere; and in military matters this is absolutely true; for if discipline is held to be of saving virtue, the want of it has been the ruin of many ere now.

Password: “Zeus the Savior, Heracles our Guide!”

• cyzicene
• sutler
• mossyn
• peltast
• sumpter
• sagaris

Helprin enjoys fires, and likes building them in the fireplace of his grand study. “Fires take a lot of labor,” he says. “As a method of heating, it is inefficient. But it’s worth it. Fire engages the senses. The light is richer than artificial light, and heating systems don’t crackle or give off the scent of wood smoke. “Tending a fire enforces a sense of patience and tranquility,” he continues. “In that way it is like sailing a boat. You’re engaged by it and trapped by it; fire is captivating. Your time is captured so you have enforced idleness. Like music, it somehow coordinates the rhythms in your brain, or in your soul. It clears the air. Enforced idleness is the way I want to live. I want to be a prisoner of things that make me stop still.”

Freedom can be surrendered either in conformity to the expectations of others or in conformity to our own passions. Legalism and libertinism are but two sides of the coin we pay to be freed from freedom.

• 23 - “A person is not built up from without but from within, that is, he is living, and all external educational appliances and activities which are intended to mould his character are decorative and not vital.” As is so often the case, we have to be careful with Mason’s terms. What are “external educational appliances?” Aren’t books external educational appliances? She’s a huge fan of books, so they must not be.
• 24 - She argues against the common gardening metaphor because children have personality (personhood), unlike plants. Josh Gibbs wrote against the gardening metaphor here.

“Boys who loved football did it, and boys who didn’t love football but rather army weapons or hunting or roaming the woods or something else did it; all the boys had shiny shoes. It was a thing to do, to be like your father.”

“That means that a boy will naturally shy away from girls during his longer period of sexual latency and his also more delayed and more protracted period of puberty. He has the work of man-making to do, though he may be only fitfully conscious of it. It is foolish and insensitive to charge him with hating girls. The truth is just the opposite. He and his friends like girls, and are powerfully attracted to them, and that is why they have to keep them to the side for a while, because otherwise the things they must do as boys will not get done at all. Boys in the company of girls do not form the strong bonds of male friendship, because they are too busy competing for the attention of the girls, so that they do not invent football, map out the forest, tinker with combustion engines, or bring down their first stag. So it appears that for the sake of both married love and the masculine camaraderie that is so dynamic in its cultural possibilities, we ought to pay attention to the boy’s needs and strengths and arrange social and educational opportunities accordingly.” One argument for sex-segregated schooling.

“When a man marries, the ancients observed, he will naturally be the less ready to fight for his nation. He will place his family first. The woman has an altogether salutary influence upon the man’s manners. But manners in a home and a neighborhood are not laws in a city. Laws and manners make up the weave of a society. Each is necessary, and each is related to the other, but they are not the same. It is men who civilize men…”

“John Senior came to see that his students could not become sane Thomists, because they had no foundation of experience to build upon. They could not rise up in our to the Creator of the stars of night, because they had never really encountered the stars of night to begin with. Grace could hardly perfect nature where nature itself was lacking. So, in the most fruitful and counter-technological educational program I know of, the Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas, begun in 1971, Senior and his two colleagues, Frank Felick and Dennis Quinn, provided young people with both nature and man’s first art, his most natural and also most religious art—poetry. They taught them how to sing. They taught the boys and girls how to dance with one another in an ordered and merry way: the waltz. They had them memorize and recite poetry. They brought them outdoors and showed them their way around the starlit sky.”

“Boys are or rather believe themselves to be relentless logicians. They believe that they arrive at their beliefs by reason and not sentiment. If authorities clash, they boys may draw the conclusion you do not expect: that no authority is worth a straw.”

You’re probably wondering why. This might be the answer. Sorry for any typing errors.

Greenmantle,

• On how the book was written: “During the past year, in the intervals of an active life, I have amused myself with constructing this tale. It has been scribbled in every kind of odd place and moment—in England and abroad, during long journeys, in half-hours between graver tasks; and it bears, I fear, the mark of its gipsy begetting. But it has amused me to write, and I shall be well repaid if it amuses you—and a few others—to read.”
• On the improbability of the events in the story: “Let no man or woman call its events improbable. The war has driven that word from our vocabulary, and melodrama has become the prosiest realism. Things unimagined before happen daily to our friends by sea and land. The one chance in a thousand is habitually taken, and as often as not succeeds. Coincidence, like some new Briareus, stretches a hundred long arms hourly across the earth. Some day, when the full history is written—sober history with ample documents—the poor romancer will give up business and fall to reading Miss Austen in a hermitage.”

• “One felt the war more in its streets than in the field, or rather one felt the confusion of war without feeling the purpose.”
• Major Bullivant on how
• has changed: “Soldiering today asks for the average rather than the exception in human nature. It is like a big machine where the parts are standardized.” (See the “no Davids or Hectors” quote from
• A metaphor worthy of Lewis: “You have chosen the roughest road, but it goes straight to the hill-tops.”
• On the nobility of the British: “We call ourselves insular, but the truth is that we are the only race on earth that can produce men capable of getting inside the skin of remote peoples. Perhaps the Scots are better than the English, but we’re all a thousand per cent better than anybody else. Sandy was the wandering Scot carried to the pitch of genius. In old days he would have led a crusade or discovered a new road to the Indies. Today he merely roamed as the spirit moved him, till the war swept him up and dumped him down in my battalion.” I was struck by the how every character in the book was constantly aware of and constantly commented on race and racial nature. The “German,” the “Turk,” the “African,” the “white man” - all have their own gifts and idiosyncrasies. Obviously Hannay thinks the British are the best.
• Unearthly music: “Then slowly from the silence there distilled drops of music. They came like water falling a long way into a cup, each the essential quality of pure sound. We, with our elaborate harmonies, have forgotten the charm of single notes. The African natives know it, and I remember a learned man once telling me that the Greeks had the same art. Those silver bells broke out of infinite space, so exquisite and perfect that no mortal words could have been fitted to them. That was the music, I expect, that the morning stars made when they sang together.”
• On the viewpoint of the Oriental: “The West knows nothing of the true Oriental. It pictures him as lapped in colour and idleness and luxury and gorgeous dreams. But it is all wrong. The Kaf he yearns for is an austere thing. It is the austerity of the East that is its beauty and its terror ... It always wants the same things at the back of its head. The Turk and the Arab came out of big spaces, and they have the desire of them in their bones. They settle down and stagnate, and by the by they degenerate into that appalling subtlety which is their ruling passion gone crooked. And then comes a new revelation and a great simplifying. They want to live face to face with God without a screen of ritual and images and priestcraft. They want to prune life of its foolish fringes and get back to the noble bareness of the desert. Remember, it is always the empty desert and the empty sky that cast their spell over them—these, and the hot, strong, antiseptic sunlight which burns up all rot and decay. It isn’t inhuman. It’s the humanity of one part of the human race. It isn’t ours, it isn’t as good as ours, but it’s jolly good all the same. There are times when it grips me so hard that I’m inclined to forswear the gods of my fathers!”
• Why Nietzsche’s Superman can never exist: “Mankind has a sense of humour which stops short of the final absurdity.” This section reminded me very much of Chesterton.
• On doing one’s duty: ““But our work lives,” I cried, with a sudden great gasp of happiness. “It’s the job that matters, not the men that do it. And our job’s done.”
• Facing death: “A man’s thoughts at a time like that seem to be double-powered, and the memory becomes very sharp and clear. I don’t know what was in the others’ minds, but I know what filled my own... I fancy it isn’t the men who get most out of the world and are always buoyant and cheerful that most fear to die. Rather it is the weak-engined souls who go about with dull eyes, that cling most fiercely to life. They have not the joy of being alive which is a kind of earnest of immortality ... I know that my thoughts were chiefly about the jolly things that I had seen and done; not regret, but gratitude.” And this reminded me of Nate Wilson.

The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment,

• Humble gifts are more valuable than expensive possessions paid for yourself. “A godly man is like a child in an inn. An innkeeper has his child in the house, and this father provides the child’s diet, and lodging, and whatever is fit for him. Now a stranger comes, and the stranger has dinner and supper provided, and lodging; but the stranger must pay for it all. It may be that the child’s fare is simpler than the fare of the stranger — the stranger has it boiled and roasted and baked — but he must pay for it; there must come a reckoning for it. It is just so with many of God’s people; they have only simple fare. But God provides it as a Father, and it is cost-free. They don’t need to pay for what they have; it is paid for beforehand. But the wicked, in all their pomp, and pride, and finery — they have what they call for; but there must come a reckoning for it all.”
• Christ has paid for all. “A child of God doesn’t have a right merely by donation. Rather, what he has is his own, through the purchase of Christ. Every bit of bread that you eat, if you are a godly man or woman, Jesus Christ has bought it for you. You go to market and buy your food and drink with your money. But know this: before you have bought it, or paid any money, Christ has bought it at the hand of God the Father, with his blood. You may have it at the hands of men for money, but Christ has bought it at the hand of his Father by his blood. And certainly, it is a great deal better and sweeter now, even if it is but a little.”
• What the righteous and the wicked have to look forward to: “Just as every affliction that the wicked have here is but the beginning of sorrows, and a forerunner of those eternal sorrows they are likely to have hereafter in Hell, so every comfort you have is a forerunner of those eternal mercies you shall have with God in Heaven.”

Leaves from the Notebook of a Trained Cynic

• “There is adventure in the Christian message.”

“Preachers of the gospel must also be students of the culture they are sent to. A minister must be a student of the Word, but he must also be a student of men. He must study them—not just men generally, but the men of his own era, the men to whom he is charged to bring the gospel. When the Lord speaks to each of the angels of the seven churches of Asia, the message for each church is different. Same gospel, different sins, and so a different message applying that gospel.”

“There are no pacifist traditions left. All worthy traditions must be militant in order to survive this time of upheaval.”

“You want to be God’s adversary, then simply make friends with the world.”

“Now the Christian Church is unique kind of community in that it is a community built up around scandal. Scandal blows most communities apart, but scandal—the scandal of the cross—is the foundation of all true Christian fellowship. Christ was crucified by all the respectable authorities, and His followers were instructed to tell the story of how that happened down to the end of the world.”

“What this tells us is what doctrinal framework the saints can expect to hear from the pulpit. It does not tell them what they are required to affirm. They are bound to affirm nothing until and unless they see it in the text of Scripture for themselves—but after that, of course honesty requires them to affirm it.”

Allow me the privilege of translating all of this into modern American English for you. Drink the Kool-Aid. Join the cult. Surrender your independence. Swallow the party line. Go baaa like a sheep. Strive for the nirvana of acquiescence.

It means to treat them lawfully from the heart. Note that this excludes a mere ticking of boxes. The emphasis needs to be on the heart. Jesus teaches us this explicitly. “Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also” (Matt. 23:26).

If you go down in the basement of a house, you will likely be able to find cold concrete in straight lines. Let us call it cold covenant concrete—a bunch of very unsentimental concrete. Then go up into the living room, and you will there find curtains, warm colors, cushions, sofas, carpet, and so on. This is where you live, and it is what makes living there enjoyable, but it cannot be the foundation of the house. Roll up the carpet, mound all the cushions, throw the curtains on top of it, and then try to situate a stud wall on top of that.

It is capable of exact demonstration that if every party in the State has the right of excluding from the public schools whatever he does not believe to be true, then he that believes most must give way to him that believes least, and then he that believes least must give way to him that believes absolutely nothing, no matter in how small a minority the atheists or agnostics may be. It is self-evident that on this scheme, if it is consistently and persistently carried out in all parts of the country, the United States system of national popular education will be the most efficient and wide instrument for the propagation of Atheism which the world has ever seen.

God requires His people to bring up their covenant children in an environment dominated by the Word of God. When we walk along the road, when we lie down, when we rise up (Deut. 6:4-9). Christian fathers are instructed to bring their children up in the paideia of the Lord (Eph. 6:4). And if man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4), then it follows that boys and girls need to be instructed in every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. These things are not optional.

“According to Scripture, a spiritual man is one who walks in step with the Spirit in this material world (Gal. 5:16). A spiritual man is not an ethereal man, or a wispy man, or a semi-transparent man. A spiritual man is never a worldly man (1 John 2:15), but he most certainly is a down-to-earth man. Worldly and practical are not the same thing. While there have been people who were so heavenly-minded they were no earthly good, it generally runs the other way. The people who have done the most earthly good have often been the most heavenly-minded. How could deep and intelligent love for ultimate wisdom incapacitate a person? “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings; He shall not stand before mean men” (Prov. 22:29). “Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men” (Prov. 22:29, esv).”

The World’s Desire,

• “And they who had not loved saw in her that first love whom no man has ever won, and they who had loved saw that first love whom every man has lost.”
• “A Queen’s courtesy is a command.”

Tales of the Long Bow,

• “He turned out spick and span for church as if for parade; but he was much too well dressed to be pointed out as a well-dressed man.”

Anabasis,

• “For without leaders nothing good or noble, to put it concisely, was ever wrought anywhere; and in military matters this is absolutely true; for if discipline is held to be of saving virtue, the want of it has been the ruin of many ere now.”
• “This observation, also, I have laid to heart, that they, who in matters of war seek in all ways to save their lives, are just they who, as a rule, die dishonourably; whereas they who, recognising that death is the common lot and destiny of all men, strive hard to die nobly: these more frequently, as I observe, do after all attain to old age, or, at any rate, while life lasts, they spend their days more happily. This lesson let all lay to heart this day, for we are just at such a crisis of our fate. Now is the season to be brave ourselves, and to stimulate the rest by our example."
• After him Xenophon arose; he was arrayed for war in his bravest apparel: "For," said he to himself, "if the gods grant victory, the finest attire will match with victory best; or if I must needs die, then for one who has aspired to the noblest, it is well there should be some outward correspondence between his expectation and his end."

• “‘Mostly I just kill time,’ he said, ‘and it dies hard.’”
• “Money. Those are the first five letters of his alphabet.”
• “Like a lot of people that read a law book he thinks the law is in it.”
• “A good jail is one of the quietest places in the world.”
• “Then he sat down near his briefcase on the far side of a scarred oak table that came out of the Ark. Noah bought it secondhand.”
• “I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split.”
• “She was standing close to me. I smelled her perfume. Or thought I did. It hadn’t been put on with a spray gun. Perhaps it was just the summer day.”
• “He has as much charm as a steel puddler’s underpants.”
• “Nothing ever looks emptier than an empty swimming pool.”
• “When you said goodnight in those days you tried not to make it sound like goodbye.”

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry

Pastor

Norms and Nobility