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?

the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive

 Ecclesiastes 4:1 to 4:3. Links to BibleHub parallel translations.

New International Version:

Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed-- and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors-- and they have no comforter.

And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive.

But better than both is the one who has never been born, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun.

And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person's envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

no major, forward-looking future visions have taken root in our collective imagination since smartphones

 --- Sarah Housley, in an opinion piece for New Scientist, We have run out of new visions of the future. This needs to change, Sep 2025

In context

The dominant images of the future that we are presented with at the moment all have long histories to them. They include space colonisation, dystopian artificial intelligence and a longing to bring back the past – but a past that never was. This makes sense given the climate anxiety and dread about the future felt by many people. The future has started to feel like it is closing off rather than opening out.

...

It’s not that absolutely no new future visions have emerged this century – think of solarpunk, for instance, a movement based on climate hope that developed online in the 2000s on Tumblr and on blogs. But it is notable that no major, forward-looking future visions have taken root in our collective imagination since smartphones came to dominate our way of communicating.

A nightmare is a failed dream, a dream that, by not “handling” anxiety, has failed in its role as the guardian of sleep

 --- Irving Yalom, quoted by Anneliese Burgess in Oor die lewe se dwarswinde, Binne+Land, 9 November 2025

Burgess writes

Ek vind Irvin Yalom se benadering tot drome verfrissend prakties en menslik. Hier is wat ek meen hy oor my droom sou gesê het. Eerstens dat die inhoud van die droom nie 'n kode is wat ontsyfer moet nie, maar eerder 'n uitnodiging tot 'n gesprek met myself.

Daardie kloppende hart is die wysheid van die liggaam wat aandring op aandag. Vir hom is tydsberekening nooit toevallig nie. Die feit dat ek droom van iets wat terugkeer na aanleiding van 'n foto uit die Kamdeboo presies 'n jaar gelede, sê iets oor waar ek nou in die lewe is.

Vir Yalom is 'n droom 'n daad van kreatiwiteit; die psige se poging om 'n storie te vertel wat miskien nog te moeilik of pynlik is om andersins sinvol verwoord te word. Yalom moedig ons aan om self betekenis uit ons drome te te skep – nie deur 'n universele droomwoordeboek te raadpleeg nie, maar uit ons kennis van onsself. 'n Groot aspek van sy denke is "eksistensiële angs" – hoe ons beïnvloed word deur ons bewustheid van ons sterflikheid, en die sterflikheid van verhoudings. Verwerping, wat in daardie droom 'n dwarswind was, raak aan 'n universele menslike vrees vir alleenheid en die dood van verbintenisse wat vir ons sin gee.

the purpose of planning is to develop the planner, not to develop the plan

 --- Angus Fletcher, in conversation with Russ Roberts about his book, Primal Intelligence, EconTalk, Nov 3, 2025,  11:25

Russ Roberts: But, say a little bit about this idea of why it's worthwhile to plan, even though the plan is smashed as soon as your helicopter lands, because then most people would say, 'Well, then that was obviously a mistake. Why would you plan if it's not going to work out?'

Angus Fletcher: So, no plan survives contact with the enemy, which is why centralized planning is always a mistake. Which is why you always have to decentralize planning to the people on the ground, who are able to more rapidly adapt and evolve as the situation itself evolves.

The reason you plan is to become a better planner. So, this is a core thing that kind of goes to the book. It actually comes from Dwight Eisenhower, and Dwight Eisenhower says that basically what you do before any military operation is you make a plan for everything you can imagine happening. You think, 'What if my enemy does this? What if my enemy does this other thing? What if I have this unexpected breakthrough? What if I have this unexpected challenge?' You make plans, you make plans, you make plans, you make plans, you make plans; and then the moment the battle starts, you throw out all the plans, and you just focus on what's happening now.

And so, to your point, why do you spend time planning? Well, the purpose of planning is to develop the planner, not to develop the plan. In other words, it's to make you better able at inventing new courses of action on the fly. 

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)

Engel 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.