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More Features, Not Bugs One of the worldviews that seems to appeal to the folks who are so excited about ChatGPT is “long-termism,” which assumes that humankind as a whole has a destiny, and that our tools will help us to reach it somewhat faster. What that destiny is, nobody knows. But work and education are hindrances to it, and, to the extent that they are necessary, should be sped through as quickly as possible. Since no real account is usually given of the thing that we are speeding to – it will involve space travel, algorithms, asteroid mining, and spreadsheets, but there’s a great nothing at its center – this worldview functions like nihilism. To me, work and education – like rest, love, worship, culture, strange hobbies, village pantomimes, dumb mistakes, chants that children jump rope to, heartbreaking last-quarter fumblings of the ball, graffiti on ugly bridges, all of it – are things we do because it is our job to be people.
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Foibles are Features As impersonal systems play increasing roles in information-gathering and decision-making, the personal element can be summed up as “human error.” … [T]hen of course the fields concerned with human nature—specifically, all the ways it is not predictable—are unseated, too…
[I]t is simply better to be a human when a personal God is at the heart of the universe. Human lives are easier to defend. Human joys have cosmic significance. Human foibles are “a feature, not a bug.” Human creativity is more arresting. Human language can be savored. Human stories must be told.
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A Treasure Malcolm Guite is posting poems he’s collected in his Advent Anthology, Waiting on the Word. I love to hear Malcolm read (and speak). Today’s offerings, a poem by Robert Hayden, and art by Linda Richardson, are particularly lovely.
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Mind the Gap 
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Yuck I’ve posted about Trump’s unfitness for… well, anything. But how awful is Biden’s statement pardoning Hunter? I understand how, as a father, he might have been compelled to save his son. But to (1) throw his own DOJ under the bus and (2) make the pardon so broad? Nope. It stinks.
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All Things Come of Thee, O Lord 
And we are thankful. Happy Turkey Day, friends!
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Maybe what most concerns me about these times… is the assaults on the truth of truth. The roots run deep – as deep as the modernism? Certainly, deeper than Trump.
But he’s stormed the battlements, and the breach is wide.
Helping repair it may be the work of my Third Act.
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“These things just don’t happen here!" Tottenham Hotspur have stormed into the palace of the champions and turned over the furniture!
COYS(!) ⚽️
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Leaving and Waving For 27 years, I took photographs as I waved good-bye and drove away from visiting my parents at their home in Sioux City, Iowa.
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Pub Name If I ever open a pub, “The Dog and Water” might be in the running for a name. 🐶
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Sounds About Right [W]e are … not going back to a world where there is a set of trusted truth-mediating institutions, core sources of news and information that everyone recognizes and trusts, a “mainstream” of argument and opinion-shaping that sets the parameters of debate. – Ross Douthat, New York Times, 16 Nov. 2024
If true, then we’ll need to learn to think for ourselves. Not that I believe we will. Which is terrifying.
But lets work on it:
Lesson 1: Yes or No: Does hosting a gameshow make a person fit to be the President of the United States of America? -
What Might This Look Like in America? An imaginative conservatism should see in Scruton’s centring of beauty in architecture and design a natural affinity with the articulation of craft as a political and economic ideal in the likes of William Morris. There is a politics and an economics of conservatism to be forged, but it requires making of itself more than an aesthetic gloss of Reaganism.
Sebastian Milbank, “Don’t Idolise Roger Scruton”, The Critic, 03.Nov.2024
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Trinity River, Great Trinity Forest, Dallas 
📷: Bill Holston
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RIP, Ted Olsen Executive power is important, and we respect it. But it has to be done the right way. It has to be done in an orderly fashion so that citizens can understand what is being done and people whose lives have depended on a governmental policy aren’t swept away arbitrarily and capriciously.
A principled and gifted lawyer and public servant. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
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Set the Wayback Machine, Sherman Say, kids! Remember that old holiday, I think it was called Thanksgiving? It was a personal favorite. So extraordinary to observe a national day of gratitude. Of course, Capitalismmas (i.e., not Christmas) erased that tired old giving-thanks day long ago.
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Snake on Wheels 
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Laura Olin [I keep coming back to] the fundamental text that is “Why must we go on?” / “Because there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”
Is all this cringe? Undoubtedly; but I think we’ve entered a time that requires deep earnestness.
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True in every era; yet, it’s a smack in the face … the narrative on which many of us grew up no longer applies.
– Joan Didion - (h/t @ayjay)
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…well, we’ll live right on… From my friend, Dan Wilson:
… whatever the outcome… “well, we will live right on.” We will all go about doing what we do, get the kids off to school, go to work, do the laundry, and go about our lives. And that is as it should be because the greatest impact on our world does not come out of Washington anyway. It never has. Ultimately, it comes from each of us and how we live out our ordinary lives, our good deeds, humility, loving our neighbor, and loving God.
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Boredom and the Struggle Jonah Goldberg:
I think Fukuyama was right about liberal democratic capitalism being the answer to the questions mooted by Marx, Hegel, Hitler, Tocqueville, and everyone else. And he was right about the problems created by liberalism’s victory. The solution to those problems is not to overthrow liberalism, but to restore the ecosystems of meaning that sustain it.
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Francine Winham, Photographer Great images and an interesting story. (Though the overwrought prose isn’t my cup of tea.)
Bassist John Lamb
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Enshittifacator-in-Chief I was talking today with Megan, who’s serving as a poll worker, and I lost it when I thought of how Trump – solely for selfish, vicious purposes – has cast doubt on the honesty of U.S. elections. Liar. There’s no evidence of any significant fraud. Traitor.
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