With “the infinite workday," Microsoft has given us a gift—or is it poison?
Don’t listen to their advice, but do pay attention to their analysis. It’s deadly earnest and somehow utterly transparent.
Revising my manuscript, I find the phrase “in my jumble judgment.” Should be humble, but there is no question that my judgment is jumbled.
The truth is Pilate not
lingering for an answer.
—R. S. Thomas, “Incarnation” (1990)
Some people confuse David Keith with Keith David. I often have trouble with Russell Hittinger versus Reinhard Hütter. But most of all the trouble for me is Perry Anderson, Benedict Anderson, Bernard Williams, and Raymond Williams.
When I’m reading or writing without an internet connection, the only secure name is Perry (though I often forget he’s the brother of Benedict). The rest of the first and last names get mixed up and I suppose Bernard Anderson wrote about imagined communities, Benedict Williams was a Marxist critic, and Raymond Williams was an analytic moral philosopher.
This has been true for more than ten years and I don’t expect my mind will ever be able to get these names straight.
[T]rue Philistines are not people who are incapable of recognising beauty; they recognise it all too well; they detect its presence anywhere, immediately, and with a flair as infallible as that of the most sensitive aesthete—but for them, it is in order to be able better to pounce upon it at once and to destroy it before it can gain a foothold in their universal empire of ugliness. Ignorance is not simply the absence of knowledge, obscurantism does not result from a dearth of light, bad taste is not merely a lack of good taste, stupidity is not a simple want of intelligence: all these are fiercely active forces, that angrily assert themselves on every occasion; they tolerate no challenge to their omnipresent rule. In every department of human endeavour, inspired talent is an intolerable insult to mediocrity. If this is true in the realm of aesthetics, it is even more true in the world of ethics. More than artistic beauty, moral beauty seems to exasperate our sorry species. The need to bring down to our own wretched level, to deface, to deride and debunk any splendour that is towering above us, is probably the saddest urge of human nature.
—Simon Leys, “An Empire of Ugliness” (1997)
Alan Jacobs, “Deskilling and Demos”:
What I’m loving here — of course! — is human effort, human exploration, figuring it out, trial and error, rough edges, things in progress: the rough ground. I’m basically repeating here the message of Nick Carr’s book The Glass Cage, and much of Matt Crawford’s work, and more than a few of my earlier essays, but: automation deskills. Art that hasn’t been taken through the long slow process of developmental demonstration — art that has shied from resistance and pursued “the smooth things” — will suffer, will settle for the predictable and palatable, will be boring. And the exercise of hard-won human skills is a good thing in itself, regardless of what “product” it leads to. But you all know that. Demos and sketches and architectural drawings are cool, is what I’m saying.
Myles Turner can’t hit a three to save his life, but man the dude is lights out from the midrange. Pick and roll with him at the foul line is money every time.
For this Father’s Day, read Bonnie Kristian on millennial and zoomer dads today.
Old-man T.J. McConnell is like sixth-man Manu. So much energy, so many good things, you take the occasional bad as the cost of getting all the good. The price of doing business is absolutely worth it.
It’s good to be back in the classroom.
Oh, and before this week I’d never used a proper chalk blackboard before, only a whiteboard. My Luddite soul was strangely warmed.
Sigh. RIP.
The right column is revealing. I have not been blogging of late. Hope to return soon.
A message this morning on a long-running thread with theology and philosophy buddies:
Wow shots fired at Halliburton as instrumental cause
I’ll just leave it at that.
I’m in CT this morning with a review of a new book about hybrid worship. The review is called: “Just Say No to Online Church."
This is a nice analysis and defense of Haliburton by Howard Beck. The frustrating thing, though, isn’t that Haliburton isn’t morphing into Kobe. It’s that Haliburton doesn’t realize how good he is even just playing within himself.
The dude can drive by nearly anyone, and nothing but good things happen when he gets to the basket. He also has a great jump shot! Yet in this series, on the rare occasion when he does get to the basket, he doesn’t even look up—he looks backwards and side-to-side, desperate for escape hatches. He’s admirably selfless and assist-first in mindset, but he needs to look to Isiah Thomas as the model: don’t always get yours first, but make the defense afraid of you; that aggression will lead to teammates' baskets before long. Yes, sometimes wait to take over till the fourth quarter; but sometimes your team needs you to lead with offense when nobody’s got it going.
Haliburton is such a fun, unique, and brilliant player; I don’t doubt he’ll figure it out. But if he could figure it out now, before Wednesday, he might have himself a chance at a ring at age twenty-five.
My kind of mall.
This week I learned from Sonny Bunch that years ago Martin Scorsese wrote a little appreciation of Wes Anderson for Esquire.
Just now in Abilene, Texas.
And speaking of Alastair, he’s in CT today with a wonderful piece on the problem with AI prayers.