Sign’s been gone for years (like Angel and many of our other walking companions in this neighborhood from ‘96 on) but I’ve carried its message ever since. Wisest words the Baptists ever shared. There are new signs there now, the result of a Boy Scout project. This one was better.
Leaving MAGA’s Billboard Campaign Targets Nashville | City Limits | nashvillescene.com https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/citylimits/leaving-maga-billboard-nashville/article_e23e9459-5a85-4939-b789-a96040022721.html
..,The details of the encyclical were interesting, but on some level they didn’t matter: “The Pope is basically telling us that AI is here to stay,” the economist Tyler Cowen wrote.
That doesn’t mean that it’s time to start “living with the machines” and automating every aspect of your life. But it might indicate that it’s time to begin the more specific work of figuring out, in a conscious and considered way, where artificial intelligence might help and hurt you, in all your particularity. If those students were to ask me their question again, I’d answer differently. I’d say, use it, definitely—but use it seriously. Be open about it. And keep track, in different contexts, of what you’re gaining and giving up. Make a list. Take notes. ♦︎
“…Whitman placed Fanny Wright alongside Thomas Paine as the two most unjustly vilified figures in the convention-bound collective memory we call history. Freedom of thought was what Walt Whitman wanted, and Fanny Wright armed him with the arsenal of self-permission to pursue it, to go where she herself had gone while still in adolescence. On the pages of her precocious book that so impressed itself upon Whitman’s imagination, Fanny Wright had stepped into and beyond deism to argue—to demonstrate with reason—that the religious notion of an afterlife is a romance of mythology for which there is no physical evidence; that it is therefore far less compelling and interesting than the romance of reality, in which matter itself is in a sense immortal, since atoms undergo a continual reconfiguration from one thing to another. Without her early and lasting imprint on his cosmogony, Whitman might never have written that “every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”” — Traversal by Maria Popova https://a.co/0bUKGTBg
Maria Popova echoes Richard Dawkins: “Someday this constellation I love will grow dim, then disband into atoms, and so will this constellation I am. “To die is different from what any one supposed,” Whitman wrote, “and luckier.” The poet who knew the amplitude of time knew too that death betokens the luckiness of having lived—the roll of the dice on the granite floor of eternity that configures each improbable existence, each I drawn from the myriad possible not-I’s that were never born and will never get to die. Everything we know of mathematics tells us that this infinite set of possible unconstellated atoms contains poets greater than Walt Whitman, chemists greater than Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, versions of you and me kinder and crueler than we will ever be. And yet here we are, between the dice, between the trees—probable impossibilities, each of us a brief traversal between not yet and never again, having only these arms to hold the borrowed atoms that we love. That is enough.” — Traversal by Maria Popova https://a.co/09v7APU0
We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe. And maybe we have to forget — or we would be too stupefied with gratitude for every raindrop and every eyelash to get through the daily tasks punctuating the unbidden wonder of our lives. But it is good, every once in a while, to let ourselves be stupefied by gratitude, to cast upon ourselves a spell against indifference: https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/12/12/thank-you-everything-icinori/
"The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive." On May 20 1990, Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson delivered his magnificent commencement address about the creative life. https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/05/20/bill-watterson-1990-kenyon-speech/
“Dogs are a very important part…” https://www.threads.com/@nprscottsimon/post/DYXJaSAibyP?xmt=AQG0O2KB81VYNV6qh1QFy6RRHxTU_seFn1kv06FijwxiHKWuPFo4svJhvdkF-kb9JR_fUOwM&slof=1
“Finally, he arrived at the most propitious of the gases: nitrous oxide. He arrived at it by chance, while experimenting with nitrogen—“ perfectly respirable when pure”—which induced strange effects as soon as it bonded with oxygen. “I made a discovery yesterday which proves how necessary it is to repeat experiments,” he wrote to his closest friend back home on April 10, 1799, then added: This gas raised my pulse upwards of twenty strokes, made me dance about the laboratory as a madman, and has kept my spirits in a glow ever since. The discovery would soon confer upon nitrous oxide the nickname “laughing gas” and upon Davy the status of international celebrity.” — Traversal by Maria Popova https://a.co/09ytBSfg
Walk: Rediscover the Most Natural Way to Boost Your Health and Longevity―One Step at a Time https://a.co/d/08o3aTF4
“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
At 87, Stewart says, self-maintenance is nearly a full-time job.
Stewart Brand might be the most influential philosopher of the internet – at least in its more idealistic era. In the 1960s, Brand was the central bridge figure between the San Francisco counterculture and the emerging technology scene. He created the legendary Trips Festival with Ken Kesey in 1966, and was there at “the mother of all demos” in 1968. And he created and edited the Whole Earth Catalog, which Steve Jobs called “one of the bibles of my generation” and “Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along.”
Brand has seen Silicon Valley evolve in the decades since. And along the way, he has written many brilliant books about our relationship to technology, the built environment and the natural world. His latest book is “Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One.”
In this conversation, we discuss everything from dropping acid to the genesis of the Whole Earth Catalog, what he thinks A.I. will reveal about humanity, the 40 years he’s spent living on a tugboat and the importance of maintenance in a culture that prizes novelty and disposability.
Mentioned:
Ezra is moderating a forum on housing and affordability with some of the top California gubernatorial candidates. The event is on Friday, May 8, in Oakland, CA. You can buy tickets here. Use the code EKSHOWfor 20 percent off your order.
Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One by Stewart Brand
“We Didn’t Ask for This Internet” with Cory Doctorow and Tim Wu, The Ezra Klein Show
I And Thou by Martin Buber
Book Recommendations:
The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch
The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester
The Scottish Enlightenment by Arthur Herman
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id1548604447Today is the birthday of Annie Dillard (books by this author), born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1945). She began writing poetry in high school, and then studied English in college. After writing a master's thesis on Thoreau's Walden, she moved to a cabin in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. There she wrote poetry and also kept a daily journal of her observations of nature and her thoughts about God and religion. She wrote in old notebooks and on four-by-six-inch index cards, and when she was ready to transform the journal into a book, she had 1,100 entries. "By the time I finished the book, I weighed about 98 pounds," Dillard said. "I never went to bed. I would write all night until the sun was almost coming up."
The result, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, was published in 1974, and Annie Dillard received her first literary award the following year: the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. She was only 29 years old. She has published collections of essays and of poetry, as well as an autobiography… When it comes to writing, she says: "Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark."
The Only Exercise Your Body Was Actually Designed For https://youtu.be/Uo8qxQY2T0U?si=HRvHWqMBFS7yWoHi
It’s the 211th birthday of Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope (books by this author), born in London in 1815. His father, Thomas, was a hot-tempered barrister who had trouble keeping a job, and the family frequently had money troubles as a result. Anthony went to a prestigious public school, but it was readily apparent that, unlike most of his classmates, he wasn’t rich, and he was bullied by students and teachers alike.
As a young man, he got a job as a postal clerk, but earned a reputation for insubordination and tardiness. He resolved to turn his life around when he was offered a transfer to Ireland in 1841, and his fortunes did indeed change: the cost of living was lower there, so he was able to enjoy a sense of prosperity, traveling more and taking up fox hunting, which he loved. His job took him all over the country, and he enjoyed the working-class Irish people, finding them more clever and hospitable than their English counterparts. And he began writing novels on his long train rides, occasionally raiding the “lost letter” box for ideas. In 1859, he transferred back to England, wanting to be within easy reach of London now that he was an established author. He remained with the Post Office for 33 years, rising to a fairly senior position, and he is credited with developing the pillar-style post box, which has since become a British classic.
He was most disciplined as a writer, getting up at 5:30 every day to write for three hours before he went to the office, and wrote in his autobiography: “Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write. But he should so have trained himself that he shall be able to work continuously during those three hours — so have tutored his mind that it shall not be necessary for him to sit nibbling his pen and gazing at the wall before him, till he shall have found the words with which he wants to express his ideas.” Trollope wrote 47 novels, dozens of short stories, and a few travel books. He created the fictional county of Bartsetshire, and set several novels there. His most famous book, The Way We Live Now (1875), is a scathing 100-chapter satire of English greed. He was, and remains, one of England’s most popular authors.
He said: “The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. It will be present to you when the energies of your body have fallen away from you. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.”
https://www.garrisonkeillor.com/radio/the-writers-almanac-for-friday-april-24-2026/https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000010851813/in-1968-they-saw-earth-from-the-moon-for-the-first-time.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
… Human beings have been looking affectionately at dogs for thousands of years — and dogs have been looking back with the same devotion. That’s the subject of a handsome work of scholarship by Thomas W. Laqueur called The Dog’s Gaze: A Visual History (forthcoming June 2, just before Father’s Day). In this lavishly illustrated book, filled with color reproductions of paintings and photographs, Laqueur explores how dogs sit, stay, and roll over in Western art — from paintings by Titian, Rembrandt, and Winslow Homer to images from the modern era. Of course, these animals are often symbols of loyalty or faithfulness, but further examination shows their iconography to be as rich and varied as the genealogy of a Schnoodle-Pomski-Chuggle-Malshipoo. “Dogs appear in art as part of a social contract,” Laqueur writes. “They see us, and we see them; and we engage with the world together.” … Ron Charles https://open.substack.com/pub/roncharles/p/what-dogs-see-what-we-see-in-them?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios
https://substack.com/@kurtbandersen/note/c-244368359?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
“Planet Earth: you are a crew.” https://www.threads.com/@amullen010/post/DXAZsdVCJ_I?xmt=AQF0hawIfoJLxxxeV1KEnbll8-U7XsbdVhVnOffS6gaPo2L1IuXgp4xP27mi58rj7Jdr2uE&slof=1
RCLS library director refuses to comply with board's book restrictions; faces disciplinary action or termination on March 30
Rutherford County Library System (RCLS) director Luanne James emailed members of the RCLS board on Wednesday, March 18, stating her refusal to comply with the board's March 16 vote to restrict access to more than 100 children's books. A copy of that email was obtained through an open records request by the library advocacy group Rutherford County Library Alliance. It is included below as a PDF.
RCLS chair Cody York has scheduled a special board meeting for March 30 to discuss disciplinary action for Ms. James. The Daily News Journal reports that York said, "As chair, I believe this matter warrants serious disciplinary consideration, up to and including termination." The special-called meeting will take place at 5 p.m. at the Rutherford County Historic Courthouse. It will be open to the public.
From David Brooks's farewell column:
...Trump is that rare creature, a philistine who understands the power of culture. He put professional wrestlers onstage at the last Republican convention for a reason: to lift up a certain masculine ideal. He's taken over the Kennedy Center for a reason: to tell a certain national narrative. Unfortunately, the culture he champions, because it is built upon domination, is a dehumanizing culture.
True humanism, by contrast, is the antidote to nihilism. Humanism is anything that upholds the dignity of each person. Antigone trying to bury her brother to preserve the family honor, Lincoln rebinding the nation in his second Inaugural Address, Martin Luther King Jr. writing that letter from the Birmingham jail — those are examples of humanism. Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs singing "Fast Car" at the Grammys — that's humanism. These are examples of people trying to inspire moral motivations, pursue justice and move people to become better versions of themselves.
Humanism comes in many flavors: secular humanism, Christian humanism, Jewish humanism and so on. It is any endeavor that deepens our understanding of the human heart, any effort to realize eternal spiritual values in our own time and circumstances, any gesture that makes other people feel seen, heard and respected. Sometimes it feels as if all of society is a vast battleground between the forces of dehumanization on the one side — rabid partisanship, social media, porn, bigotry — and the beleaguered forces of humanization on the other.
If you want to jump in on the side of humanization, join the Great Conversation. This is the tradition of debate that stretches back millenniums, encompassing theology, philosophy, psychology, history, literature, music, the study of global civilizations and the arts. This conversation is a collective attempt to find a workable balance amid the eternal dialectics of the human condition — the tension between autonomy and belonging, equality and achievement, freedom and order, diversity and cohesion, security and exploration, tenderness and strength, intellect and passion. The Great Conversation never ends, because there is no permanent solution to these tensions, just a temporary resting place that works in this or that circumstance. Within the conversation, each participant learns something about how to think, how to feel, what to love, how to live up to his or her social role.
One of the most exciting things in American life today is that a humanistic renaissance is already happening on university campuses. Trump has been terrible for the universities, but also perversely wonderful. Amid all the destruction, he's provoked university leaders into doing some rethinking. Maybe things have gotten too preprofessional; maybe colleges have become too monoculturally progressive; maybe universities have spent so much effort serving the private interests of students that they have unwittingly neglected the public good. I'm now seeing changes on campuses across America, from community colleges to state schools to the Ivies. The changes are coming in four buckets: First, a profusion of courses and programs that try to nurture character development and moral formation. Second, courses and programs on citizenship training and civic thought. Third, programs to help people learn to reason across difference. Fourth, courses that give students practical advice on how to lead a flourishing life...
nyt
From Paul Bloom... Some good suggestions here, but #17 doesn't work in the chatgpt era.
https://open.substack.com/pub/paulbloom/p/19-pieces-of-teaching-advice-0e9?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer
"…One of the peculiarities of the American educational system, compared with those in other democracies, is that most public school districts prefer hiring graduates with degrees in education rather than in specific academic subjects like history and physics. This leads to a greater focus on the methods of teaching, expressed in jargon phrases like "inquiry-based learning," than on acquiring particular knowledge. Traub found a real allergy among public school educators to memorization of vocabulary, chronology and narrative — the elemental material out of which reality-based opinions and arguments can be formed.
In some places, fear of running afoul of politicized parents seems to have made some teachers gun shy about raising certain subjects. In Ron DeSantis's Florida, Traub reports, parents at one Miami school received a notice that their first graders would need a signed permission slip to "participate and listen to a book written by an African American."
In other states, too many teachers just seem to have abdicated their responsibilities out of despair, convinced that their students are no longer capable of reading whole books or remembering what they read. "History has been pushed to the side within social studies because there's too much reading and writing," as one frustrated teacher in Illinois puts it, on the verge of tears. "That creates too much stress, and it makes the kids feel bad about themselves…"
…Literacy rates are the highest in the history of the world. Still, the world that Huxley imagined, and Postman prophesied, is upon us. That's because people consume Facebook updates, Instagram captions, and X posts throughout the day. Rarely do they pick up a book. A recent Atlantic story, citing the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, said that just 48 percent of Americans had read a single book in 2022, a 6 percent decline from a decade earlier. According to a study released in August, over the past two decades the number of Americans who read for pleasure daily has fallen from 28 percent to 16 percent. The slide among young people is even more pronounced.
Turns out, reading a book is a lost art—and the demise of book reading might have dire consequences. "Perhaps this plague of illiteracy has played a role in the disappearance of truth and, with it, liberal democracy," George Packer wrote in The Atlantic this fall.
By that account, I suppose I shouldn't feel too bad about my early morning in Rome. The least insidious manifestation of a postliterate age is wasting time scrolling through Instagram; the worst is the most powerful country in the world being led by a cadre of egomaniacal, antidemocratic morons...'
Hope in a Time of Cynicism... At a moment when Americans are distrusting and fearful...
While optimism is the belief that the future will be better, hope is the belief “that we have the power to make it so,” said Chan Hellman, the director of The Hope Research Center at the University of Oklahoma. It is “one of the strongest predictors of well-being,” he said. It helps improve the immune system and aids recovery from illness. More hopeful people may actually grow taller than less hopeful people...
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/01/briefing/hope-in-a-time-of-cynicism.html?smid=em-share
"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind." God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (and see Mr. Rogers, below)
"Love may fail, but courtesy will prevail."
Jailbird, prologue
When asked in 1978 about his writing process, Updike said, “I’ve never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think that pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them, you will never write again.”
After the birth of his third child, he had rented an office above a restaurant in Ipswich, and spent several hours each morning writing there. Throughout his 50-year career, he remained devoted to that schedule, writing about three pages every morning after breakfast, sometimes more if things were going well. He said: “Back when I started, our best writers spent long periods brooding in silence. Then they’d publish a big book and go quiet again for another five years. I decided to run a different kind of shop.” WA
 | Alain de Botton (@alaindebotton) |
Why ‘Earthrise’ Matters thebookoflife.org/why- | |
 | Five Books (@five_books) |
The 'father of science fiction' HG Wells suffered terribly from class anxiety. Huxley and Woolf thought him 'vulgar' == Five books on... | |
Charles Darwin (@cdarwin)1/11/15, 6:51 AM"And maybe this is what I have learned more than anything from my great-great-grandfather: to keep my eyes and my mind open, to enjoy the wonders of nature and never cease to ask questions." Sarah Darwin, foreword to "A Modest Genius: The story of Darwin's life and how his ideas changed everything" by Hanne Strager
Posts
All Comments
Posts
All Comments
