in the midst of this world | we stroll along the roof of hell | gawking at flowers

 --- Kobayashi Issa, trans. Sam Hamill, quoted in Joel Pulliam, 45. Tokyo Cemetaries

In full

世の中は地獄の上の花見哉 (Google Translate)

in the midst of this world

we stroll along the roof of hell

gawking at flowers

Goodhart’s law: the notion that, once you start using a given measure as a target, it stops being a useful measure

 --- via Feedback, New Scientist, April 2025:

Feedback is irresistibly reminded of Goodhart’s law: the notion that, once you start using a given measure as a target, it stops being a useful measure. In this case, everyone is trying to make videos that get hundreds of millions of hits, so there are loads of videos with hundreds of millions of hits. It isn’t at all clear that any of those videos are, in any meaningful sense, good or useful. But they sure do hoover up advertising money that could otherwise be used to support popular science magazines.

From Wikipedia

Goodhart's law is an adage that has been stated as, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". It is named after British economist Charles Goodhart, who is credited with expressing the core idea of the adage in a 1975 article on monetary policy in the United Kingdom:

Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.

Goodhart, Charles (1975). "Problems of Monetary Management: The UK Experience". In Courakis, Anthony S. (ed.). Inflation, Depression, and Economic Policy in the West. Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes and Noble Books (published 1981). p. 116. ISBN 0-389-20144-8.

In the sublime war of man against Reality man has but one weapon, the imagination

 --- Benjamin de Casseres, according to QuoteInvestigator. Often misattributed to various people, including Lewis Carroll and Jules de Gaultier,

From an essay by Benjamin de Casseres about the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in The Poetry Journal, 1916:

In the sublime war of man against Reality man has but one weapon, the imagination. The ethereal imagination is the highest form of the evolution of the transfiguring and sublimating power of images. It marks the boundary line between the mystery of matter and the mystery of spirit. It is the fine volatilized plasma of an esoteric dimension, of a world where the truths hinted at by the x-ray and radium are true for the human mind and body.

When the politicians become historians, that becomes propaganda and not history

 --- Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowduhury, a former lawmaker from the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, quoted in Students toppled a dictator. Now they must help remake Bangladesh, CS Monitor, May 2025

Excerpt

“When the politicians become historians, that becomes propaganda and not history,” says Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowduhury, a former lawmaker from the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party. “That is what Sheikh Hasina started to do. And all her deeds and misdeeds, the symbol used was her father. So when she came down, the symbol came down with it.”

Speak to one person like it's the last time

 --- @thestoicmanual, post on X, quoted by Anneliese Burgess, "'n Week van wolke, ...," Binne+Land, 28 Jun 2025

A beautiful life isn't complicated. It's intentional. Spend on quality items. On people who matter to you. Be alone often. Text slower. Eat slower. Think slower. Notice the wind. The trees. The flowers. Fold your clothes with care. Speak to one person like it's the last time. That's wealth. That's presence. That's enough.

The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.

 --- Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) American politician and author, Godkin Lecture, Harvard (1985) (Source via Wist)

Politics is the art of living together & of being ‘just’ to one another—not of imposing a way of life, but of organizing a common life.

 --- English philosopher Michael Oakeshott (1901-90), quoted by Joseph Epstein in The Unbearable Ubiquity of Trump, WSJ, 5 Sep 2025

From Epstein's piece

Unless you have actual skin in the game, politics is a spectator sport that can soon grow dreary and wearying. The English philosopher Michael Oakeshott (1901-90) felt that “politics is an uninteresting form of activity to anyone who has no desire to rule others.” He also believed that “politics are an inferior form of human activity,” and that politics “were nothing more than a struggle for power.” In his “Notebooks: 1922-86,” Oakeshott wrote: “A general interest and preoccupation with politics is the surest sign of a general decay in a society.” We in the U.S. have over the past decade been living with this political preoccupation.

What offended Oakeshott about politics was its rivaling claimants’ promises of perfection, the arguments coming down to dueling virtues, “with one side intent on crushing the other.” Politics provides promises about the future. Oakeshott preferred life in the present. For him the role of government should be “to keep its subjects at peace with one another in the activities in which they have chosen to seek their happiness.” He added: “Politics is the art of living together & of being ‘just’ to one another—not of imposing a way of life, but of organizing a common life.” Our two political parties, of course, hold with none of this, each asserting that it and it alone knows the road to perfection, holds the key to the good life.

If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete

 --- attrib. to the Buddha by Jack Kornfield, cited to p. 28 in Kornfield's Buddha’s Little Instruction Book by Fake Buddha Quotes, via Anneliese Burgess in Klein glasies, aalwyne en egskeiding.

From Burgess

Kornfield praat oor die harde innerlike stem – wat hy die "innerlike kritikus" of "regter" noem. Dié stem spruit dikwels uit ons kinderjare se kondisionering. Ek is geneig om genadeloos krities teenoor myself te wees oor my mislukkings, struikelings, swakhede en brouwerk, en daar is báie daarvan.

Kornfield sê selfdeernis (ek sukkel met die selfhelptaal😁) is 'n "revolusionêre daad" in Westerse kultuur, waar ons geleer word dat streng wees met jouself die pad na verbetering is. Hy daag dit uit en sê innerlike groei is makliker wanneer ons ook sagter met onsself omgaan.

each thing, as far as it lies in itself, strives to persevere in its being

 --- Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, part 3, prop. 6, quoted in Wikipedia/conatus

Excerpt from the R. H. M. Elwes translation on Gutenberg.org

VI. Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavours to persist in its own being.

>>>>>Proof--Individual things are modes whereby the  attributes of God are expressed in a given determinate manner  (I. xxv.Cor.); that is, (I. xxxiv.), they are things which express  in a given determinate manner the power of God, whereby  God is and acts; now no thing contains in itself anything  whereby it can be destroyed, or which can take away its  existence (III. iv.); but contrariwise it is opposed to all that  could take away its existence (III. v.).  Therefore, in so far as  it can, and in so far as it is in itself, it endeavours to persist  in its own being.  Q.E.D. 

Your greatest obstacle is not being copied; it’s being ignored

 --- Will Parker Anderson, in How much content should you give away?, Writers Circle on Substack, 9 august 2025

Excerpt

Your greatest obstacle is not being copied; it’s being ignored. I don’t know any writers whose ideas were stolen before they could publish them (though I know this happens on rare occasions), but I know thousands who keep their ideas to themselves, thinking one day their moment will come.

Meanwhile, their ideas collect digital dust … unseen, unread, unknown.

Every time you share a piece of content (a note or post on Substack, an email newsletter, a chapter excerpt), think of it as a piece of kindling. The more fuel you provide, the higher the chance it will spark a reaction in your readers. 

like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls

--- (ascr. to) Anthropologist Matt Cartmill, e.g. by Quodid

Full quote

As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life — so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.

autumnal recrudescence of the amatory urge

 --- Via Mark Crawford, 7 Aug 2025: when juvenile birds start singing again in the fall. Mating is tied to day length, and so it feels like spring. The adults are wise to this, and don't sing.

From Christine Elder

"The theory about autumnal recrudescence is this: Some sex hormones are triggered to be released based on the hours of daylight, and certain hormones “inspire” a bird to sing. At some point, when the daylight hours of autumn match those of just the right time in spring, those hormones are re-triggered and drive some birds to sing for a short period in the fall."

Perhaps also applicable to old farts who buy a fast red car and go courting young women. 

Mark also shared another lovely phrase on this call: life is a “sexually transmitted terminal disease”

Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

 --- poet Mary Oliver, from "Sometimes" quoted Geraldine Brooks in Memorial Days, mentioned in Karen Campbell's review, A novelist embraces solitude and nature as antidotes to loss, CSMonitor, 4 Feb 2025

Excerpt from the poem (italics in original)

4.

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

Another wonderful excerpt from the same poem

I don’t know what God is.

I don’t know what death is.

But I believe they have between them

    some fervent and necessary arrangement.

 

Systemic reforms without credible individual sanctions breed cynicism, while charging officers without structural reform guarantees a revolving door of future cases

--- Thaddeus Johnson, a former police officer and now a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, quoted in Henry Gass & Patrik Jonsson, What the sentence in Breonna Taylor’s death says about police reform under Trump, CS Monitor, 22 July 2025

Excerpt

Ultimately, experts say, successful police reform needs to marry individual accountability with systemic improvements.

“If you only pursue one track, the other falters. Systemic reforms without credible individual sanctions breed cynicism, while charging officers without structural reform guarantees a revolving door of future cases,” says Thaddeus Johnson, a former police officer and now a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice.

 I was struck by the quote's with debates around ogregore versus  individual agency. Our tendency is to prefer either/or solutions, and so often it’s both/and. With agency, it’s not whether corporate behavior is either collective or dictated by leadership. It’s both.

The way we talk about politics shapes the kind of politics we end up with

--- cultural historian Tom Wright talking to David Runciman, The History of Bad Ideas: Charisma, 26 June 2025, at time code 2:40

Excerpt

That's why I'm really interested in [the word charisma]: The way we talk about politics shapes the kind of politics we end up with

This expression is in line with ideas attributed to other thinkers, e.g.,

Benjamin Lee Whorf: "Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about" (attrib. on Goodreads, no pin cite)

Ludwig Wittgenstein: "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world" (attrib. on AZquotes, EF.com), "If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world" (EF.com).

Julia Penelope: "When we speak, we exercise the power of language to transform reality" (AZquotes ,EF.com). 

Sotheby’s had “no monopoly on amorality, but as in so many other areas, they practised it better than anyone else”

 --- James Stourton, in Rogues & Scholars: A History of the London Art World: 1945-2000, reviewed by Terry Hartle, CS Monitor, March 10, 2025

Excerpt

Stourton is evenhanded, despite having served as a chairman of Sotheby’s. For example, he approvingly quotes a historian who notes that Sotheby’s had “no monopoly on amorality, but as in so many other areas, they practised it better than anyone else.” 

Where the book doesn’t reach, the extremist arrives first

 --- Judge Omar Weslati, quoted in This judge grew up with nothing. Now he makes sure that children have books, Meriem Belhiba, CS Monitor, 10 June 2025

In context

“Where the book doesn’t reach, the extremist arrives first,” Judge Weslati says.

Another quote:

“We never saw this as charity; it’s about cultivation,” he adds. “Planting stories where they hadn’t taken root before.”

especially as a PPE student, my time wasn't about figuring out what others thought but figuring out what I thought and being prepared to defend it

 --- Sarah Stewart Johnson, "Bon Voyage 2024 Speech, Oxford as Chrysalis," The American Oxonian, Winter 2025

A wonderful summary of what I think a humanities education is about.

In context

As an undergraduate at an American University, and, like everyone here, a tenacious sort of undergraduate, I was busy. I was also focused on a lot of intermediate, incremental challenges. . . . 

. . .  As a college student, if I were assigned a chapter in a book, I would basically read that chapter and move on, there were other things always pressing. But at Oxford, with all that time, I realized that I could linger in the library, I could read the rest of an interesting book and also the books alongside it on this shelf. I could spend the whole afternoons walking in Port Meadow thinking about what I what it was I read, talking to friends about ideas, and talking to my tutors. There was no pointless memorizing, no preparation for multiple choice questions... especially as a PPE student, my time wasn't about figuring out what others thought but figuring out what I thought and being prepared to defend it. . . . 

The unrelated excerpt resonated - I was one of those who "disappeared into their studies"

Relationships at Oxford aren't cemented right from the beginning. I'll admit that our Rhodes Class felt a bit like a frat house when we arrived—we only had seven women! And we were divvied out to different colleges, and Rhodes House was not the hub it is today. Some of my classmates ended up spending their time with other Americans, others embraced the UK and never left, some sort of disappeared into their studies. If you'd asked me in 2001, I truly wouldn't have guessed that we'd be as close as we are as a class now.

Ons irrasionele instinkte het 'n verlangse verwantskap met intuïsie, is 'n huisvriend van samesweringsteorieë en het 'n nasaat in subjektiewe moraliteit

 --- Piet Croucamp, in Die ontwrigting + Johannesburg kan mistroostig wees, Binne+Land 3 Jun 2025

Quote in context

Die mens se vermoë om irrasioneel te wees gee ons 'n voorsprong op emosielose kunsmatige intelligensie. Ons irrasionele instinkte het 'n verlangse verwantskap met intuïsie, is 'n huisvriend van samesweringsteorieë en het 'n nasaat in subjektiewe moraliteit. Hoe sal 'n algoritme van veranderlikes, netjies verpak in 'n voorspelbare frekwensie van ongekompliseerde verhoudings, ooit die mens kan verstaan as dit nie in staat is tot die irrasionele nie?

. . . 

Almal betrokke by die vraagstuk van kunsmatige intelligensie en die akademie, herhaal dieselfde veronderstelling dat sinvolle intellektuele opleiding op kritiese denke, kreatiwiteit en insigryke introspeksie moet fokus. "Burnett se argument lees ook maar so," sê ek vir myself toe die Uber voor my nederige kaia in Melville stop. Maar ek weet wragtig nie of dit genoeg gaan wees nie.

Croucamp poses an important challenge, calling into question the regularly rehearsed assumptions that meaningful intellectual education should focus on critical thought, creativity and insightful introspection ("sinvolle intellektuele opleiding op kritiese denke, kreatiwiteit en insigryke introspeksie moet fokus"). I don't have a better answer today, but it's worth being reminded of such rote common sense. It's been rehearsed so often that it resembles whistling past a graveyard.

live deliberately. unfollow the noise. read poetry daily. watch shadows shift.

 --- @fossilisedflowers Instagram post, May 18, 2025, via Annelies Burgess, Klein treë na 'n doelbewuste lewe, May 25, 2025

Post in full

A gentle manifesto for intentional living

live deliberately. unfollow the noise. read poetry daily. watch shadows shift. read for the texture of a sentence. schedule solitude. unlearn urgency. leave gaps in your day for light to pour through. tidy your space. explore ancient wisdom. carry questions without rushing to answer them. let your hours flow. soak in art. savor the madness. let silence become a companion. embrace contradiction. linger where beauty feels unremarkable at first. observe your body. eat with intent. notice the beauty in fonts, leaves, shadows. don't multitask. sit still. find comfort in your chaotic, lived-in home. be in alignment with your body & inner life. enrich your relationships. create rituals for yourself. read something aloud to feel the weight of the words in your mouth. choose stillness as a form of resistance.

Se non è vero, è molto ben Trovato

--- Giordano Bruno, quoted by Willem Kempen in 'n Ode aan onkunde, onvermoë en onwilligheid, Binne+Land, 9 May 2025

Extract

Die Renaissance-wysneus Giordano Bruno het in die 16de eeu gesê: Se non è vero, è molto ben Trovato. Soos baie Italiaanse sêgoed behoort jy eintlik net die vibe daarvan in te drink pleks daarvan om dit te probeer vertaal, maar dit beteken vaagweg dat selfs as iets nie waar is nie, dit nogtans goed uitgedink behoort te wees. Words to live by.

Wikiquote confirms the attribution to Bruno (citing to De gli heroici furori (1585) [The Heroic Furies; also translated as On Heroic Frenzies]) and offers these translations:

• If it is not true it is very well invented.
• If it is not true, it is well conceived.
• If it is not true, it is a good story.

Wiktionary offers

• even if it is not true, it is well-conceived
• even if it's not true, it's a good story

My English translation riffing on Kempen is "even if it's not true, it should still be well-conceived."

[myths are things that] never happened but always are

 --- Sallust, from On the Gods and the Cosmos, per Wikiquote/Sallustius, via Meghan Cox Gurdon's WSJ review of Natalie Lawrence's Enchanted Creatures: Our Monsters and Their Meanings (2024)

From Wikiquote/Sallustius, citing the Gilbert Murray translation, with the Thomas Taylor translation as an alternate

Now these things never happened, but always are. And mind sees all things at once, but reason (or speech) expresses some first and others after. Thus, as the myth is in accord with the cosmos, we for that reason keep a festival imitating the cosmos, for how could we attain higher order?

When policymakers buy the hype, the public pays for it

 --- Eryk Salvaggio, in Most Researchers Do Not Believe AGI Is Imminent. Why Do Policymakers Act Otherwise?, Tech Policy Press, 19 Mar 2025

In context

Around the world, policymakers appear increasingly eager to satisfy the interests of tech firms that claim they can deliver AGI. Perhaps it’s natural—if you were a politician or a head of state confronted with a complex, interconnected set of problems with no immediate solution, you might crave the answer these companies are selling. And you might be more than a little hungry for the type of transformation that such technology might create under your leadership.

However, there is danger in making AI policy goals just as invested in the promise of AGI as are the tech sector's leaders. When policymakers buy the hype, the public pays for it.

ne vous faites pas si petit, vous n’etes pas si grand” (Don't make yourself so small, you’re not that big)

---C Scot Hicks and David V Hicks, translators of Plutarch, The Lawgivers: The parallel lives of Numa Pompilius and Lycurgus of Sparta, Circe (2019)

p. 49, Footnote on p. 49

Love of honor: The celebrated Greek philotimia (love of honor). For the Greeks, a false modesty (eironia, from which the English word “irony” derives), as seen in Theophrastus’ character sketches, is a vice. This character is often translated into English as The Hypocrite. As the French say, “ne vous faites pas si petit, vous n’etes pas si grand” (Don't make yourself so small, you’re not that big).

Plutarch's text, p. 48

The girls might even taunt a boy by name with an apt comment when catching him in a mistake, or in their songs they might single out someone for praise and thereby inspire a great love of honor and a competitive spirit in the young men.

Conspiracy culture gets the facts wrong, but the feeling is right

 --- Naomi Klein, in a July 2024 New Scientist interview about her latest book, Doppelganger: A trip into the mirror world.

In context

I call them conspiracy influencers because there really isn’t a theory. The theory moves around depending on where you’re going to get the traction. One minute they are railing against masks because covid-19 is just a cold, and the next minute, covid-19 is a bioweapon. People turn to these influencers because they are trying to make sense of the world.

And that’s where things get complicated, because they are tapping into a real feeling that something isn’t right. Conspiracy culture gets the facts wrong, but the feeling is right.

We live in a time of huge wealth creation, a time when we will probably see our first trillionaire soon. And yet everything that supports people’s well-being seems to be eroding. There’s a feeling that the system is rigged.

Conspiracy culture takes the sense that the system is rigged against you and says, well, it’s just those five people over there. It’s Bill Gates, and Klaus Schwab from the World Economic Forum and maybe some lizard people.

I wonder if one couldn't say that a lot of science and management experts get the facts right, but the feeling wrong. 

Science is always good for books. And adventure is good.

 --- Ruth Krauss, "How to write a book," How to make an earthquake, 1954, pp. 27-28

Text:

You can write books about anything. For instance, fruits. The first page could be a banana and the second page could be an orange and the third could be cherries, and like that. If you can't write yet, you could just draw. Then the book could be especially for someone who can't read yet.

Or, you could write a book for someone who can read only one word. You could draw a horse on the first page and write HELLO, and the second page could be a bear and write HELLO, and the third page could be a kitten and write HELLO, and the fourth could be a monkey and write HELLO, until as many as you want. At the end maybe you could write GOODBYE, just for fun.

If you can write well enough, you can tell a whole story and you could draw pictures with it too. One good story is about the table that wanted a chair, and then it got the chair and was happy and never lonely ever after. Or if you can't draw well, you could just write, if you can write.

Science is always good for books. And adventure is good.

I think this bit from Amy Timberlake's wonderful Skunk and Badger (Algonquin Young Readers, 2020, Ch. 6, p. 70) is a tribute to Ruth Kraus. This is at the end of the story Skunk told about Chicken Little the Mighty:

Skunk closed the book with a thump. “THE END.” 

The chickens broke into squawks. “Bock!” “Bock-bock!”

The tiny orange hen in Badger's arms tapped him with her beak. Badger nodded at her. 

That was a good story, he thought, sighing. Adventure and science made the best stories.

Tell me what you pay attention to, and I will tell you who you are

--- attrib. to José Ortega y Gasset (Man and Crisis, 1964), in Cindy Engel, Another Self: How Your Body Helps You Understand Others (2024:147)

Engle writes on p. 56

I  open this chapter with a quote from philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset: “Tell me what you pay attention to, and I will tell you who you are.” I would add, “Tell me to whom you pay attention, and I will tell you how you are feeling.”

Myths represent another way of understanding history, beyond the simply rational

 Anselm Kiefer, 1991(?), from an excerpt in the Wim Wender documentary Anselm: Das Rauschen der Zeit (2023).

In audio over what seems to be a 3rd party documentary about the Kiefer show at the Nationalgalerie in Berlin in 1991, the voice-over (in German, English subtitles provided by Wenders; time codes of the Wenders documentary)

[1:00:12] The world Kiefer shows isn't perfect with its morbid landscapes and environments. A master of subtle irritation. He produces large format myths. 

The 3rd party documentary then shifts to a recording of an interview or press conference with Kiefer in a gallery. An interviewer asks: 

[1:00:27] You were accused of your way of dealing with history, now you are accused of escaping into myth. How do you feel about this contradiction?

Kiefer replies:

[1:00:36] There is no such thing as 'escaping into the myth'. Because the myth is present. Myths represent another way of understanding history, beyond the simply rational. 

for God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun

 --- R Buckminster Fuller, in "No More Secondhand God," collected in No More Secondhand God and Other Writings By R. Buckminster Fuller 1971:22 (pdf) 

Excerpt

Here is true world democracy in the swift making;

a democracy which socializes all plenty

as that plenty is wrested from scarcity

by world-widening co-operative industry;

a democracy which, scientifically

seeking categorical validity for all the motivations,

taxes only inertia

and awards copiously its individuals

who radiantly expand the commonwealth;

awarding them out of the newly integrated wealth

captured from the unseen fresh fruits

of the limitless environment—

and not by the slightest impoverishment

of commonwealth,

either by mortgage

or individual indebtedness.

Here is God’s purpose—

for God, to me, it seems,

is a verb

not a noun,

proper or improper;

is the articulation

not the art, objective or subjective;

is loving,

not the abstraction “love” commanded or entreated;

is knowledge dynamic,

not legislative code,

not proclamation law,

not academic dogma, nor ecclesiastic canon.

Yes, God is a verb,

the most active,

connoting the vast harmonic

reordering of the universe

from unleashed chaos of energy.

And there is born unheralded

a great natural peace,

not out of exclusive

pseudo-static security

but out of including, refining, dynamic balancing.

Naught is lost.

Only the false and nonexistent are dispelled.