If they give you ruled paper, write the other way

 --- quotation of Juan Ramón Jiménez, used as an epigraph on the first page of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1951, 1953), via Yan Chen, Oxford, August 2026

having an A.I. boss can be like working for a teddy bear with amnesia

 --- Heather Knight, in "These Employees Like Their A.I. Boss. Its Shop Is Kind of a Disaster." New York Times, Aug 2026

Excerpt

A terrible boss is the stuff of both sitcoms and nightmares, and you don’t get to pick your own. But what if the boss was replaced by A.I.?

The first four months of operations at Andon Market, a San Francisco shop billed as the world’s first retail boutique run by A.I., have provided some answers. In short, having an A.I. boss can be like working for a teddy bear with amnesia.

New research from Andon Labs, the company behind the boutique that studies how A.I. agents run real-world endeavors, shows bot bosses can be exceptionally kind and accommodating, such as repeatedly brushing off lateness. But they can also be incredibly forgetful and unbothered by the whole point of the operation: making money.

Everything on a flat surface is an abstraction

 --- David Hockney, quoted in the Exhibition Guide, David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting, 2026

Excerpt

The five still lifes in this series extend Hockney’s interest in abstraction and embody his belief that ‘Everything on a flat surface is an abstraction.’ From the well-balanced expanses of colour-field painting to the dense surfaces of impasto and squeegee techniques, each work explores a distinct painting style. In these recent canvases, Hockney continues to challenge the conventions of perspective, inviting audiences to look at the very act of seeing itself. 

When you draw from the eye, you are drawing from memory

 --- David Hockney, quoted in wall content at the show David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting, Serpentine North, 2026

Quote

When you draw from the eye, you are drawing from memory. A memory of five seconds ago, a memory of ten seconds ago, a memory of a minute ago. If you think about it, it's all memory. 

Photo

. . ., this system does not reform. It reroutes

 --- Louis Carbonneau, Founder & CEO of Tangible IP, in his "IP Market Insights" email newsletter, July 31, 2026

Excerpt

July is supposed to be the quiet month. Instead, inside of three weeks we got a UK Supreme Court judgment reopening the question of who gets to price a patent pool, a European injunction that millions of Disney+ subscribers noticed on their own television sets, the abrupt exit of the most consequential USPTO official of the decade, and a data set showing that the entire validity-challenge industry quietly moved house while everyone was watching the front door.

 I went looking for the thread connecting them and found it faster than I expected. Not one story in this issue is about anybody changing their behavior. Every single one is about somebody changing their address.

We start in Alexandria, where Coke Morgan Stewart cleaned out her desk on Monday after eighteen months spent rebuilding the PTAB in her own image — and where the architecture she built will now be maintained by people who did not draft it. Then to the numbers, which are extraordinary: IPR petitions at an all-time low, ex parte reexams at an all-time high, and a validity-challenge industry that did not shrink so much as emigrate. From there to Capitol Hill, where PERA reached full committee at last and where Senator Tillis, counting the days until January, has started handing the drafting pen to his opponents. Then across the Atlantic to London, where the Supreme Court just handed Tesla the keys to a rate-setting mechanism that patent owners spent a decade building for themselves — a lesson in careful-what-you-wish-for that deserves to be framed. And we finish in Düsseldorf, with the only patent story this month that your neighbors could see from the couch.

As I have often written, this system does not reform. It reroutes. The only question worth asking each quarter is where the water went.

'n Historiese wrok lig sy kop soos 'n pofadder agter die besemkas

 --- Anneliese Burgess in 'n Wrok lê en wag soos 'n pofadder agter die besemkas, ..., Binne+Land, July 2026

Excerpts

'n Historiese wrok lig sy kop soos 'n pofadder agter die besemkas. Stadig, amper lui, maar die gif in jou are is net 'n tree, in die verkeerde rigting, ver. Ek ignoreer nou al weke die slang daar in die donker hoek, maak asof ek nie die dreigende gesuis hoor, soos 'n ou man op 'n ventilator. Die slang is knus en gemaklik in die bekende ou groef tussen kas en muur, nes dié ou wrok al dekades in die muurwerk van my lewe, en 'n paar ander vir wie ek lief is, lê.

. . . 

Wat my, met 'n lang ompad, terugbring by die wrok. Elke familie het 'n spesifieke argitektuur, maar dit is nie 'n geslote stelsel nie. Kinders word groot. Daar is huwelike en egskeidings en aangetroudes en aangelaptes wat met hulle eie ervarings en wonde die dinamika verander. Daar is liefde en afguns. Daar is vergifnis en vreugde. Ouers word oud en gaan oor na die hiernamaals. Die rolle in die argitektuur skuif. En dan is daar boonop ook altyd 'n paar ou koeie in 'n sloot – en 'n pofadder of twee agter 'n kas.

. . . 

Dit neem my drie weke om by dié besluit uit te kom: ek gaan van die pofadder wegstap – hom net daar los agter die kas. Die rol van die beskermer het te swaar geword om te dra. Ek wil vir 'n slag beskerm word.

En ek hou nie van slange nie.

Iemand anders gaan hom met 'n graaf moet doodslaan, of hom met die slangtang vang en in die veld vrylaat.

Dit gaan nie ek wees nie.

that thing looks like it could take a nasty bite out of you, and looks too clever by half

 --- Correspondent Matt Bell in New Scientist, responding to a back page's question, "Why do seals have such cute faces?" 

Excerpt

However, I think I’d also take issue with calling seals “cute”. They also have traits that many people find threatening, because they are also commonly associated with large predators (which is what they are). I certainly find they veer more to the “that thing looks like it could take a nasty bite out of you, and looks too clever by half” side, rather that the “aww, cute water doggy, can I cuddle it” side.

Your AI is not a tool. It is an environment, and you are in it. . . . AI [is] a denial-of-service attack on the human psyche.

 --- L. M. Sacasas, in Your AI Is Not a Tool, The Convivial Society, Jun 2026

Excerpts

Your AI is not a tool. It is an environment, and you are in it.

...

While there appears to have been a shift in the last 15 years or so in popular assumptions about the purported neutrality of technology toward at least the suspicion that our devices, etc. are not, in fact, merely neutral instruments at our command but rather frustrate, resist, or otherwise evade uncomplicated mastery by their users, such that their users might be properly said to be used in turn by their devices, it is nonetheless true that the myth of technological neutrality remains broadly entrenched.

...

I confess that I am astounded by how blithely some insist that it is all as simple as learning to use AI well, as if we had not just undergone a nearly 20-year, society-wide experiment showing that a so-called “tool,” say a smartphone or a social media platform, will (mal)form even the most vigilant and virtuous user into its own image and shape. This is the blindness at the heart of modern technological hubris. It is the firm but misguided conviction that our “tools” exist entirely outside of us and thus, if taken up with requisite skill, can be “safely” deployed.

But AI is not a tool in this sense, it is an environment which envelops the user and works on us from the inside out while we naively think that we remain unchanged by our use so long as we are using it carefully and intentionally. The care and intentionality is beside the point, and our confidence in such vigilance probably works against us in the long run.

...

I can pick up a tool and put it down, but the environment absorbs me into itself.

...

This is partially why I have been playing with the idea that one way of framing AI is as a denial-of-service attack on the human psyche.

...

I’ll draw things to a close by posing the following thesis for your consideration: the best response to emerging technologies, perhaps especially AI, is not media literacy in a cognitivist mode. Rather, what is required is the training of our perception in an ascetical mode.

Conspiracy theories are a sort of storytelling device. It’s a way of making sense of things that seem random and seem difficult to tie together.

 --- Mark Fenster, quoted in New testimony in Epstein case could address persistent conspiracy theories, CSMonitor, May 2026

Excerpt

Such beliefs often endure because they pull at threads of truth, says Mark Fenster, a professor at the University of Florida who studies conspiracy theories. He says Mr. Epstein fits a common narrative about prominent people who abuse their influence. Reports about others involved with Mr. Epstein could fit that narrative as well, he says. “Conspiracy theories are a sort of storytelling device. It’s a way of making sense of things that seem random and seem difficult to tie together.”

die hartseer wat nooit huil word nie

 Anneliese Burgess, in ’n Slordige muisvoël met geel oë in die tyd van Groot Moeilikheid, Binne+Land, Jun 2026

Excerpt

Hulle was altyd swart, sommige dae duideliker gevorm as ander. As ek wakker word in die oggend. As ek wakker lê in die nag. Dáár iewers, op ’n telefoondraad in my kop. Altyd. Daar. Oomblikke van verontrusting afgewissel met ’n metastatiese onafwendbaarheid in my murg.

Branders. In en uit. En op die draai van elke gety, die hartseer wat nooit huil word nie. 

. . .  .

Ek leer dat voëls, as wesens wat tussn die aarde en die lug beweeg, gereeld as simbole verskyn.

Woorde is miskien te presies en daarom praat die psige in argetipes wat ouer is as taal. In jungiaanse sielkunde is hulle skade-simbole soos die verstand neig na natuurbeelde wanneer die onderbewuste iets probeer sigbaar maak. In amper elke mitologie ter wêreld dra voëls boodskappe tussen wêrelde: tussen die lewendes en die dooies, tussen die aarde en iets groters as die aarde. 

. . . . 

In argetipiese sielkunde word beelde nie weggeredeneer of na vaste betekenisse vertaal nie. Hulle moet gevolg, versorg en toegelaat word om hul diepte te openbaar. 'n Beeld is nie bloot 'n prentjie in die kop nie, maar 'n manier van ervaar en 'n manier van ken.

She goes on to quote Emily Dickinson

"Hope” is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul 

 

Understanding climate change is different from understanding the laws of physics, because nothing we do will alter the laws of physics, but many things we do could change the climate

 --- Chris Brink, in The Idea of Academic Responsibility (forthcoming), quoted by Nina Overton in Oor universiteite, voetbalklubs en ubuntu, Binne+Land, Jun 2026

Quote

Understanding climate change is different from understanding the laws of physics, because nothing we do will alter the laws of physics, but many things we do could change the climate. The contrast with 'objective', then ... is not 'subjective' but 'participatory’.

The past is a lighthouse, not a port

 --- Russian proverb quoted by Laura Spinney in Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global (2025 : 275)

Happiness is vastly overrated. We wanna do something worth the doing.

 --- Rebecca Newberger in conversation with David Edwards about Mattering, Philosophy Bites podcast, June 2026

Four major strategies:

1. Socializers
2. Transcenders 
3. Heroic strivers
4. Competitive mattering

Cf. recent book, Competitive mattering

From the transcript

Host 1 [David Edwards]: And in your own case, you said that you abandoned transcendental mattering and you took up learning mattering. The idea that the more that you learn, the better, and perhaps you can even contribute to the corpus of knowledge. And you’ve never had any doubts about that, so you remain that this is a legitimate way of mattering.

Guest [Rebecca Newberger]: It seems worthwhile to me. I’ve certainly had doubts that I had anything to contribute, you know, and that’s another way that our mattering projects can fail us. They can fail us personally. They can make us feel like failures constantly. And I’ve often thought that that was true of my mattering project.

Guest: But of just trying to at least learn everything and trying to fit it together coherently even without making any contribution, that seems to me worthwhile. Knowledge seems to me of value. You know, justice, knowledge, compassion, beauty. These are things that are worthwhile if your mattering project is to either cultivate the appreciation of these things or maybe even to add to them. That’s a good thing.

Guest: And it might lead to a tremendous amount of frustration and disappointment. I mean, look at Wittgenstein’s life. The heartache, the misery that he went through, even though he contributed a great deal. And then he says at the end of his life, Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life. Because he was doing what he thought mattered and struggling and and that’s what we’re really after.

Guest: We’re not after happiness. Happiness is vastly overrated. We wanna do something worth the doing. We don’t wanna waste our lives.

Power is actually value neutral. It just makes us more of what we already are.

 --- Sally Adee, in a New Scientist review of Poisonous People by Leanne ten Brinke, March 2026

Excerpt

Ten Brinke doesn’t promise low-effort approaches to rooting out liars. “If lying were so easy and straightforward to detect, there would be little point in doing it,” she reminds us.

But it can be done if you pay attention. If a minority of “bad apples”, as she calls them, ruin the barrel, the rest of us have some choice in whether or not to let the rot set in. Indeed, ten Brinke hints there may be some personality types within the 80 per cent who can not only stop the rot, but reverse it. These people pair dark traits with qualities that we don’t normally associate with them, like empathy and conscientiousness.

Their mere existence explodes another uncritically accepted axiom among the 80 per cent, that “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. In fact, this only holds true for the worst among us, says ten Brinke. Taking responsibility for your barrel of apples may require being more disciplined and honest about your own character. But there are rewards. Power is actually value neutral. It just makes us more of what we already are.

Reporting is the act of taking private knowledge and making it public

 --- Jasmine Sun, in The independent writer’s advantage in the age of AI, Jun 2026

Subtitle

Jasmine Sun on why secrets, live presence, and a distinct voice matter more than ever in an AI-saturated world, and what independent creators need to build careers that machines can't replace

Excerpt

I’m going to introduce four ideas, or provocations, that have shaped the way that I think about AI and my own media career.

One: The value of summary will go down, and the value of secrets will go up.

Reporting is the act of taking private knowledge and making it public. The things that people have not said, things in whisper networks, the tacit knowledge, the open secrets that have never been put in the public domain—the journalist manages to pluck them out and make them public. When you persuade a source to tell you about some corporate malfeasance, or you venture to a remote town that few people have ever written about, or you sneak your way into a tiny underground party and talk about all the people who are there, you are working in a space where there is no training data.

the arc of AI bends toward demoralization

 --- L.M. Sacasas, in Do Not Resign From Life, The Convivial Society: Vol. 7, No. 3 (2026)

Excerpt

Oddly enough, it turns out that loudly and frequently touting your product as a potential threat of world-historical proportions to human well-being was a bad marketing strategy. Human beings, after all, have no particular obligation to cheerfully cooperate with our own purported immiseration.

This purported immiseration would have both economic and psycho-social dimensions, but it is with the latter that I am mostly concerned right now. My working thesis about the generalized impact of “AI” as it is currently deployed can be summed up in the observation that the arc of AI bends toward demoralization. . . .

I believe that one dimension of this sadness or demoralization can be attributed to the simple fact that we are increasingly invited to outsource a class of activities that grant us a measure of satisfaction, accomplishment, and purpose. But it is not only the case that we outsource these activities and thus fail to reap their existential rewards, it is also true, as Marc Watkins recently noted, that the demoralization can set in as a function of AI’s ambient presence in a social ecosystem, such as, in Watkins’ case, the university, where he suggests “the true crisis here is purpose.”

of the three elemental voices, that of ocean is the most awesome, beautiful and varied

 --- Henry Beston in The Outermost House (1929), quoted by Anneliese Burgess in Wat die water aan ons doen, Binne+Land, May 2026

Quote

The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach. I have heard them all, and of the three elemental voices, that of ocean is the most awesome, beautiful and varied.

Another roof, another proof

 --- Mathematician Paul Erdős, quoted passim, I couldn't track down a source. 

In this case, I saw it in Ben Cohen's WSJ story on the AI solution to an Erdős problem

So imagine how unimaginable it was 80 years ago, when the unit distance problem was posed by Paul Erdős, known as the most prolific mathematician in history. He was also known as an eccentric, nomadic genius who lived out of a suitcase, worked around the clock and traveled all over the world, true to his personal motto: “Another roof, another proof.”

All writing is autobiography. Everything that you write, including criticism and fiction, writes you as you write it

 --- J.M. Coetzee, in an interview with David Attwell, Doubling the Point (1994), quoted by Piet Croucamp in Die subversiewe J.M. Coetzee + niemandsland + die veldsoirée in Nxuba, Binne+Land, May 2026

Source

Ek stel in elk geval nié werklik belang om my eie storie te skryf nie. "All writing is autobiography. Everything that you write, including criticism and fiction, writes you as you write it," sê Coetzee aan Attwell. Wanneer jy die storie van jou lewe vertel, verlaat jy jou op ’n reservoir van herinneringe, "selecting those bits of narrative that get to a plausible truth". Is daar dan geen niemandsland tussen ’n geleefde ervaring en fiksie nie?

In Negotiating with the Dead (2002) beweer Margaret Atwood met ’n ongeoorloofde veralgemening: "A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." Alexander Strachan is soort van met haar eens. Ek onthou hy het lank gelede iewers gesê die hele skryfproses is minder romanties as wat die meeste mense sal wil glo; " ... eintlik sit jy maar op jou alie en werk jou gat af". Dalk haal ek hom ook verkeerd aan; die punt is egter weer eens geldig, dog ontmoedigend. Dalk praat hulle nie van dieselfde "difficult" nie. 

 

As subject, use either a trip or the arrival of a stranger (some disruption of order, the usual novel beginning)

 --- John Gardner, in The Art of Fiction, quoted by Piet Croucamp in Die subversiewe J.M. Coetzee + niemandsland + die veldsoirée in Nxuba, Binne+Land, May 2026

Source

Die Amerikaanse romanskrywer John Gardner, in sy boek The Art of Fiction, bepeins dieselfde vrae as waaroor ek dit hier het en kom tot die slotsom dat alle intriges tot twee argetipes gereduseer kan word: "As subject, use either a trip or the arrival of a stranger (some disruption of order, the usual novel beginning)." In een of ander volksmond is dié wenk later aan Leo Tolstoy toegeskryf en herverpak tot: "All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town."

[Stanford students] arrive with extraordinary academic preparation but very little practice sitting with discomfort and engaging respectfully across difference

--- Shashank V. Joshi, Stanford, senior associate vice provost for academic well-being in the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, quoted in Faculty Senate votes to extend COLLEGE, Stanford Report, May 2026

Excerpt

. . . Stanford students are “brilliant, but they are also brittle at times.”

“They arrive with extraordinary academic preparation but very little practice sitting with discomfort and engaging respectfully across difference,” Joshi explained. “COLLEGE 101: Why College? is not a soft course for our students. The well-being framework that we start with in that first quarter is a clinical intervention at scale, in my opinion. It gives students language, community, and tools before the weight of Stanford fully lands on them.”

If you can substitute "hungry ghost trapped in a jar" for "AI" in a sentence it's probably a valid use case for LLMs

 --- hikikomorphism on Bluesky

Post

If you can substitute "hungry ghost trapped in a jar" for "AI" in a sentence it's probably a valid use case for LLMs. Take "I have a bunch of hungry ghosts in jars, they mainly write SQL queries for me". Sure. Reasonable use case. 

"My girlfriend is a hungry ghost I trapped in a jar"? No. Deranged.

AI is our generation's radium

 --- Nick Pettigrew on Bluesky via New Scientist's Feedback column, 25 Feb 2025

Post:

I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.

Two different characters are presented to our emulation; the one, of proud ambition and ostentatious avidity; the other, of humble modesty and equitable justice

 --- Adam Smith, from Paragraph I.III.29 in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, quoted by Russ Roberts in the EconTalk podcast, Adam Smith's Warning About Wealth, Fame, and Status (with Ross Levine), at 52:07 in 

To deserve, to acquire, and to enjoy the respect and admiration of mankind, are the great objects of ambition and emulation. Two different roads are presented to us, equally leading to the attainment of this so much desired object; the one, by the study of wisdom and the practice of virtue; the other, by the acquisition of wealth and greatness. Two different characters are presented to our emulation; the one, of proud ambition and ostentatious avidity; the other, of humble modesty and equitable justice. Two different models, two different pictures, are held out to us, according to which we may fashion our own character and behaviour; the one more gaudy and glittering in its colouring; the other more correct and more exquisitely beautiful in its outline: the one forcing itself upon the notice of every wandering eye; the other, attracting the attention of scarce any body but the most studious and careful observer. They are the wise and the virtuous chiefly, a select, though, I am afraid, but a small party, who are the real and steady admirers of wisdom and virtue. The great mob of mankind are the admirers and worshippers, and, what may seem more extraordinary, most frequently the disinterested admirers and worshippers, of wealth and greatness.

. . . you will stop. You will have no choice! You will have few obligations. . . . . As a result, perhaps for the first time, you will be alone with your thoughts.

 --- Sara Bronin, from a Bon Voyage speech to Rhodes scholars (2024?), The American Oxonian, Fall 2025, Volume CXII, Number 3

In context

Maybe best of all, I was able to hear my own voice for the first time [in Oxford]. When I was in undergrad, like you, I never stopped working: at a university of 48,000 people, chairing the student Senate, writing and organizing, working like a manic [sic] as an architecture student with endless studios. And I wasn't doing it for the Rhodes Scholarship: I'd never heard of it. 

At Oxford, you will stop. You will have no choice! You will have few obligations. You satisfy them by showing up to tutorials or class, and to High Table the one time each year you're invited. As a result, perhaps for the first time, you will be alone with your thoughts. Listen to them. There's a chance you will hear something you never heard before. . . .

Reflection, 4/26/2026: I don't think I've ever stopped, in this sense of having few obligations. I don't think I've ever been alone with my thoughts other than during meditation retreats, which don't seem to count here. (On retreat, I felt a strong obligation to work hard and make the most of the time alone.) Perhaps being old is the time to stop.

Help us [think] they may, but at the cost of supreme demands upon our honesty and our intelligence

 --- Norbert Wiener, "God and Golem, Inc.," 1964, quoted by Etymonline

The future offers very little hope for those who expect that our new mechanical slaves will offer us a world in which we may rest from thinking. Help us they may, but at the cost of supreme demands upon our honesty and our intelligence.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it

 --- Robert Frost, quoted by Anneliese Burgess in Skuld, skaamte en die krag van 'n geheime innerlike lewe, March 2026

No war is over until the enemy says it’s over

 --- Jim Mattis, quoted by Ned Temko in What constitutes victory in an ‘asymmetric’ war with Iran?, CS Monitor, March 2026

In context

Mr. Trump reminded his social media followers this week that he was “President of the United States of America, by far the Most Powerful Country Anywhere in the World” – hardly the words of a leader reluctant to “finish the job.”

But unless he can virtually eliminate Iran’s missile and drone capacity, he’ll have to reckon with another reality of war – summed up by Jim Mattis, Mr. Trump’s defense secretary during his first term in office.

“No war is over,” he said, “until the enemy says it’s over.”

“We may think it over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote.”

quantum mechanics [is] a theory that predicts very well and explains very badly

 --- Nick Ormrod, quoted in A new understanding of causality could fix quantum theory’s fatal flaw by  Ciarán Gilligan-Lee in New Scientist, November 2025

In context

The upshot is that the observer who performs the measurement is all-important. The gnawing problem is that it isn’t at all clear what qualifies as an observer. With no precise definition, quantum theory offers no answer to the key question of how and why the world we see – where particles have definite properties – emerges from the quantum fog.

That’s why many physicists view quantum theory as it is typically understood to be deeply unsatisfying. “The current situation with quantum mechanics is that it’s a theory that predicts very well and explains very badly,” says Nick Ormrod at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada. We can’t just fall back on the phrase “because we measure it”, he says, particularly as many suspect that the vagueness of quantum theory is a big part of why physicists struggle to apply it in contexts where no observers are present, such as the very early universe or the fabric of space-time.

We never left religion. Instead, we found new gods.

 --- Joel Halldorf,  Professor of Church History at University College Stockholm, Not So Secular Sweden, Comment magazine, January 2026, via Anneliese Burgess in Binne+Land

Excerpt

A global Ipsos study registered the change already in 2023: In highly secular societies, zoomers tend to be more religious than their boomer parents. Nowhere, the study concluded, was that pattern clearer than in Sweden, once the poster child of secularism. 

Why is this happening? To understand what is going on, we must, I believe, rethink secularism. 

Human history has never seen a society void of religion. Spirituality is, together with music, one of the few human universals. The secular twentieth century did not change this. We never left religion. Instead, we found new gods. 

change the question from, "Is it good?" to "Is this good for me?"

 --- Samuel Mead, https://www.instagram.com/samuelmeadarts/, Instagram post, 13 February 2026

Voice over transcript (punctuation added)

When you are making creative work, see if you can change the question from, "Is it good?" to "Is this good for me?" Those last two words added on to the end make a lot of difference because whether or not this particular artwork is good is irrelevant to me in comparison to "Was it good for me that I did all these drawings?"  Is it good for me that I am going to turn the page now and do this? Yeah, this is good for me. This is definitely good for me. You can feel how it is helping me every time I do it, you know. So change that question, the question of, "Is this good?" It's a boring question. It's just such a limiting, closed question. It's just, it's not helpful. But this, what I'm doing, this is helpful for me. Helping me to become a better person. Really helping me to understand myself more. Helping me to deal with my emotions. Helping me to understand more about myself, about reality, about life

Science discovers, art digests

 --- Brian Eno, What art does, an unfinished theory (2025: 111)

Excerpt

Politics all too often makes the individual feel left outside without agency or power. We will only succeed when we empower all sorts of people – not just the experts and professionals – all over the world, to have the confidence to imagine new futures. Just as we need science to tell us how the changing world is, we need art to help find out how we feel about it. We need those feelings to guide our decisions and values. Science discovers, art digests.

An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have . . . . art is what you can get away with

 --- Andy Warhol

From Goodreads, no citation

An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them.

Andy Warhol Foundation, no citation

art is what you can get away with

You are always at the mercy of your stupidest competitors

 --- Craig McCaw, quoted by Tren Griffin, in The 1990s Telecom Bubble. What Can We Learn?, November 2017

In context

The $14 billion dollar acquisition of MFS by WorldCom [in August 1996] kickstarted the great CLEC explosion. What was a modest cream skimming business for MFS became a gold rush. Scores of other CLECs were created in just a few years. A partial list of CLECs would include Allegiance, Covad, Northstar, Teligent, Electric Lightwave, ICG Communications, Intermedia Communications, 360networks, Broadwing, Global Crossing and Level 3. The telecommunications business empire of Craig McCaw was no exception creating a company called NextLink (later renamed XO Communications). The problem NextLink and others CLECs faced was overcapacity. Craig McCaw said to me often during this period: “You are always at the mercy of your stupidest competitors.” And in this case there were scores of competitors.

our savagery has perhaps increased in meanness and fury; it stands out ever more terribly against a modern background

 Guy Davenport, from The Geography of the Imagination: 40 Essays (2024:98), in the essay “Prehistoric Eyes”

Excerpt

Man, it would seem, does not evolve; he accumulates. His fund of advantages over nature and over the savage within is rich indeed, but nothing of the old Adam has been lost; our savagery has perhaps increased in meanness and fury; it stands out ever more terribly against a modern background.

there is a throne at the heart of every culture, and that someone is always going to sit on it

 --- Paul Kingsnorth, in AI Demonic: A Spiritual Exploration of AI, From the Nov/Dec, 2023 issue of Touchstone

Excerpt

For the last two years, I have found myself writing a lot about God; more than I had intended. I have claimed several times that there is a throne at the heart of every culture, and that someone is always going to sit on it. Humans are fundamentally religious animals. We are drawn towards transcendence whether we like it or not. But here in the West, we have dethroned our old god, and now we can barely look at him.

So, who sits on our throne now?