Brad East's Micro Blog

Sun, 10 May 2026 21:31:30 -0500

Sun, 10 May 2026 21:30:42 -0500

Wed, 06 May 2026 21:22:19 -0500

Wed, 06 May 2026 12:30:25 -0500

A gift from a parting senior.

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:21:04 -0500

I have always loved Jrue Holiday’s game. Just wish he could be in silver and black, or at least not facing us in round one while Wemby’s out…

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 22:05:03 -0500

Read Caldwell on imperial decline, technological change, and international order. And meditate on this sentence taken out of context (it leads into a brutal final paragraph):

More information doesn’t always mean you make better decisions—it may mean you have to make decisions more quickly, which often means lousier decisions.

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 21:59:29 -0500

Read Robin Sloan on the extraordinary technological qualities of … the notebook.

He’s not joking, nor am I!

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 21:57:13 -0500

Also in Portico, read Alan Jacobs' essay on Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow.

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 21:55:01 -0500

I love it when Adam Roberts goes down his little etymological rabbit holes—here it’s “bite the dust,” from Homer and French poetry through English translations of The Iliad all the way to Queen.

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 21:53:47 -0500

Freddie is right here, both about the present and about the past. The key text here is David Edgerton’s The Shock of the Old. More recently it’s worth reading every entry in Charles C. Mann’s multipart series for The New Atlantis called “How the System Works."

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 21:44:26 -0500

Read Alexander Larman on J. G. Ballard in the first issue of the new journal Portico.

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 21:41:20 -0500

Loved reading this update from Noah Hawley. I didn’t realize the next season of Alien: Earth was already about to start filming.

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 21:29:48 -0500

I enjoyed the first edition of Sean Fennessey’s movie newsletter for The Ringer.

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 19:49:18 -0500

Matthew Walther:

Perhaps this is taking a bit of A.I. slop too seriously. I am not so sure. It is difficult to understate just how shocking the image is. No president, no medieval king, no emperor or modern dictator has ever publicly represented himself as Jesus Christ or claimed for himself the ability to raise the dead. To Catholics the posting of this image is, or should be, the most profoundly offensive act imaginable, a grave public sin that brings shame to, and invites God’s judgement upon, our nation. Even for secular readers it must be a staggering reminder of the dangers of divinizing those in authority and of the role institutional Christianity has played historically in preventing it.

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 22:34:36 -0500

What a quote from Barth. He’s never not preaching.

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 22:34:16 -0500

Was reminded this evening how much I appreciate Logan Williams' 2024 article titled “The Stomach Purifies All Foods: Jesus’ Anatomical Argument in Mark 7.18–19." Worth a close read.

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 22:17:05 -0500

Ditto Alan contra this piece.

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:25:06 -0500

I’m in CT this morning with a piece about the uses and purposes of just war theory.

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 16:17:36 -0500

I still remember reading the opening paragraphs of this May 2007 Page 2 column by Bill Simmons. Two decades later I could paraphrase it off the top of my head, having not looked at it in years.

I enjoy listening to the podcast, but I wish he still wrote.

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 16:13:40 -0500

I’m afraid I have to co-sign this downer take on Project Hail Mary. I’m a defender of Peter Jackson’s multiple endings to ROTK, but then, that was after nine hours of an epic journey with an enormous cast of characters. In the case of PHM, I just wanted it to end already.

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:01:05 -0500

I missed this piece from a year ago by Griffin Gooch called “The Witch Trials of John Mark Comer." Spot on from start to finish—minus his mild criticism of me, since he and I are on the same team here. Defending Comer from superficial criticisms shouldn’t mean shielding from any criticisms!

That mild dissent notwithstanding, and in light of my newly discovered role as Comer-explainer wherever I travel or speak, I expect to be sharing this a lot going forward.

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:35:49 -0500

In a recent lecture Miroslav Volf brought my attention back to Canto 3 of Paradiso, in which Dante has the souls on the bottom rung of heaven, so to speak, answer how they possibly resist the urge to ask or yearn for more. How, that is, are they content with their station rather than jealous of those above their rank?

Their answer (lines 70-27):

Frate, la nostra volontà quieta
virtù di carità, che fa volerne
sol quel c’avemo, e d’altro non ci asseta.

Robin Kirkpatrick translates:

Dear brother, we in will are brought to rest
by power of caritas that makes us will
no more than what we have, nor thirst for more.

Or as we might render the relevant phrase: “We desire only what we have." In Miroslav’s looser paraphrase, “We hope for what we have." Which is to say, what we have is what we want, and what we want is what we have. In a word, true contentment and rest.

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 14:02:16 -0500

Co-sign Alan’s pitch to redistribute your media portfolio. I’m currently subscribing to too many magazines … but I’d prefer to have that problem than the alternative.

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 13:12:48 -0500

The Lent issue of The Lamp was a cover-to-cover no-misses edition. Some recs from an outstanding issue: Matthew Walther on technological poverty, Paul Griffiths on Wittgenstein, Eve Tushnet on the dandy, Theodore Dalrymple on Marat, Roger Lewis on Tom Stoppard, and B. D. McClay on the parables of the steward.

Even just writing those out leaves me a little dumbstruck. What a great magazine.

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 13:09:41 -0500

Read John Ehrett on the post-religious right. One of the best essays on this topic from the last decade.