Oh, they are welcome to my work. As a matter offact, the Editions Victor are bringing out my Jnvitation to aBeheading in a reprint of the original Russian of 1935, and a NewYork publisher (Phaedra) is printing my Russian translation ofLolita. 1 am sure the Soviet Government will be happy to admitofficially a novel that seems to contain a prophecy of Hitler’sregime, and a novel that condemns bitterly the American systemof motels.

I note incidentally thatprofessors of literature still assign these two poets to differentschools. There is only one school: that of talent.

NABOKOV: By “editor” I suppose you mean_proofreader.Among these I have known limpid creatures of limitless tact andtenderness who would discuss with me a semicolon as if it werea point of honor—which, indeed, a point of art often is. But Ihave also come across a few pompous avuncular brutes who wouldattempt to “make suggestions” which I countered with a thunder-ous “‘stet!”’

Derivative writers seem versa-tile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artisticoriginality has only its own self to copy.

My characters are galley slaves.

As Derrida writes ofthe computer, ‘I don’t feel the interposition of the machine as a sortof progress in transparency, univocity, or easiness. Rather, we areparticipating in a partly new plot’ (2005: 21). H

Furthermore,combinatorial logic dictates that the card index is also the wellspringof creativity insofar as it permits expansive possibilities for futureintellectual endeavours (see Hollier, 2005: 40; cf. Krapp, 2006:367).

published under the title‘An Almost Obsessive Relation to Writing Instruments’, which firstappeared in Le Monde in 1973, Barthes describes the method thatguides his use of index cards:I’m content to read the text in question, in a ratherfetishistic way: writing down certain passages,moments, even words which have the power tomove me. As I go along, I use my cards to writedown quotations, or ideas which come to me, asthey do so, curiously, already in the rhythm of asentence, so that from that moment on, things arealready taking on an existence as writing. (1991:181)

, as a key historical technology ofinvention. I intend this last term in the precise sense in which Derrida(1989) understands it, that is, as an oscillation between theperformative and the constative, with the former working to disruptitself (the performative) and the latter (the constative) – or whatmight be termed the unsettling operation of invention.

What Iam alluding to here is well drawn out in Walter Benjamin’s reflectionin his Moscow Diary on how we ‘grasp’ a visual image. ‘One does notin any way enter into its space’, he writes. Rather, ‘It opens up to usin corners and angles in which we believe we can localise crucialexperiences of the past; there is something inexplicably familiarabout these spots’ (Benjamin, 1985: 42).

In his illuminated bookJerusalem, Los—Blake’s alter ego—voiced a sentiment that might have servedas the Romantics’ motto. “I must create a system,” Blake’s character declared, orelse “be enslav’d by another man’s.”

nother factor militating against completeadvice was the notion that methods should be kept secret to be most effective.One author of a university thesis on the topic noted that most scholars were un-willing to share their secrets on note-taking with others. A few advice givers rec-ommended “keeping the secrets of your studies to yourself ” on the grounds thatpeople would be most impressed by achievements that they did not understand.39

“Note-taking” is a general term that covers various kinds of writing in responseto listening, reading, or thinking, often in more or less direct preparation for theproduction of a composition or report (oral or written).

Conrad Gesner, for example, observed in his editionof Stobaeus: “I ask you, who of the learned doesn’t either take commonplacenotes or wish they did from their daily reading on moral matters?”1

James Boswell (1740–95) defended the state of learning in his day: “It has been maintained that this superfoetation, this teeming of the press in modern times, is prejudicial to good literature, because it obliges us to read so much of what is of inferiour value, in order to be in the fashion; so that better works are neglected for want of time, because a man will have more gratification of his vanity in conversation, from having read modern books, than from having read the best works of antiquity. But it must be con-sidered that we now have more knowledge generally diffuse; all our ladies read now, which is a great extension.”

n the first vernacular bibliography Anton Fran-cesco Doni lauded the happiness of the illiterate who were spared the “maledic-tion of books”

A complaint more specific to the quantity of books was articulated in 1522 by the jurist Giovanni Nevizzano of Asti (d. 1540) who observed that the great number of available books made it hard to find the books one needed. Proper selection among the many books available was crucial because “if a scholar does not have the books required for his subject, he does not enjoy the privi-leges of a scholar.”20

Even if the Speculum was copied only in parts, Vincent of Beauvais exposed the reader to multiple opinions on any topic he discussed. Neither the concordance nor the encyclo-pedic compendium resolved the textual difficulties or contradictions that they helped bring to light. Vincent explicitly left to the reader the task of reaching a final conclusion amid the diversity of authoritative opinions that might exist on a question: “I am not unaware of the fact that philosophers have said many contradictory things, especially about the nature of things. . . . I warn the reader, lest he perhaps be horrified, if he finds some contradictions of this kind among the names of diverse authors in many places of this work, especially since I have acted in this work not as an author, but as an excerptor, that I did not try to reduce the sayings of the philosophers to agreement but report what each said or wrote on each thing; leaving to the judgment of the reader to decide which opinion to prefer.”161

“hold no learning in contempt, for all learning is good.”

As a general rule, if your call is to dismantle institutions without a plan for what is supposed to take their place, you can safely assume the default setting is “the market will take care of it.”

The book was reviewed in all major magazines and newspapers, sparking what historian Ronald Kline has termed a “cybernetics craze,” becoming “a staple of science fiction and a fad among artists, musicians, and intellectuals in the 1950s and 1960s.”

“We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior.” Stephen Covey This statement, made by author Stephen Covey

As James Clear said in Atomic Habits: ​

for tens of thousands of years Aboriginal people and tourists Islander people have paid incredibly close attention to the world around them and still do today have developed knowledge 00:09:51 systems that are more complex than we could ever imagine or as intellectually capable as anybody else if not much more and that their traditions have a very detailed scientific component that we can learn from if we just shut up and 00:10:04 listen

Gramsci famously said "I am a pessimist because of intelligence but an optimist because of will."

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past," as Rage Against the Machine sang in their 1999 song "Testify." OK, actually it's a quote from George Orwell's 1984, but hey.

I mean there’s no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers — at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.'

"The best way to predict the future is to build it," computer scientist Alan Kay famously said.

"Memory produces hope in the same way that amnesia produces despair," the theologian Walter Brueggeman wrote.

Nicholson Baker on commonplace books: “My own bristling brain-urchins of worry melt in the strong solvent of other people’s grammar.”

Mary Karr on memorization as Eucharist: “It rewires your head and keeps you in company with gods.”

As Professor Rangi Mātāmua, a Māoriastronomy scholar, explains:Look at what our ancestors did to navigate here—you don’t do that onmyths and legends, you do that on science. I think there is empiricalscience embedded within traditional Māori knowledge ... but what they didto make it meaningful and have purpose is they encompassed it withincultural narratives and spirituality and belief systems, so it wasn’t just seenas this clinical part of society that was devoid of any other connection toour world, it was included into everything. To me, that cultural elementgives our science a completely new and deep and rich layer of meaning

Mostof the knowledge shared in this book is what might be consideredthe ‘lower levels’, meaning it is equivalent to primary school intraditional cultures. Star knowledge is far more complex and in-depththan we discuss in this book, but even this is a lot to absorb.

Creativity occurs when a person, using the symbols of a given domain ... has a new idea or sees a new pattern, and when this novelty is selected by the appropriate field for inclusion in the relevant domain. The next generation will encounter that novelty as part of the domain they are exposed to, and if they are creative, they in turn will change it further.

people are more likely to gesturewhen they have something to gesture at.

Gesture encourages experimentation.”

“One man’s dirty trickster is another man’s freedom fighter,” he wrote in his 2018 book “Stone’s Rules,” a collection of career lessons including how voters will believe a “big lie” if it is kept simple and repeated often enough.

“Noteson paper, or on a computer screen [...] do not make contemporaryphysics or other kinds of intellectual endeavour easier, they make itpossible” is one of the key takeaways in a contemporary handbookof neuroscientists (Levy 2011, 290) Concluding the discussions inthis book, Levy writes: “In any case, no matter how internalprocesses are implemented, insofar as thinkers are genuinelyconcerned with what enables human beings to perform the

RichardFeynman once had a visitor in his office, a historian who wanted tointerview him. When he spotted Feynman’s notebooks, he said howdelighted he was to see such “wonderful records of Feynman’sthinking.”“No, no!” Feynman protested. “They aren’t a record of my thinkingprocess. They are my thinking process. I actually did the work on thepaper.”“Well,” the historian said, “the work was done in your head, but therecord of it is still here.”“No, it’s not a record, not really. It’s working. You have to work onpaper, and this is the paper.”[33]

"To have another language is to possess a second soul." Charlemagne

The mere fact that there’s still a community with values that are just about sharing, learning, and getting to know each other, who want something like this, should be a happy sign for everyone involved.

The thing about IndieWeb is that it’s still a place where people and ideas matter.

Pretending we were all the same never worked, because it ignored the fact that we’re not all given the same opportunities to succeed or fail on our merits; some are privileged, others are oppressed. Refusing to recognize that only prolonged difficult conversations and much-needed soul-searching, dooming more generations to repeat the cycle.

My preservation solution is to federate the content. It is only through proliferation that things really last. Much of our genome, for example, is more stable than the earth's continents. That's something. The internet is speedy but life is tenacious.

I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat.”

“Good manners can replace intellect by providing a set of memorized responses to almost every situation in life,” he wrote. “Memorized responses eliminate the need for thought. Thought is not a very worthwhile pastime anyway. Thinking allows the brain, an inert and mushy organ, to exert unfair domination over more sturdy and active body parts.”

“The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer and remove the crab grass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then get elected and prove it.”

As Terry Doyleand Todd Zakrajsek put it: “If learning is your goal, cramming is anirrational act” (Doyle and Zakrajsek 2013).

When we try to answer a question before we know how to, we willlater remember the answer better, even if our attempt failed (Arnoldand McDermott 2013)

“Manipulations such as variation, spacing, introducing contextualinterference, and using tests, rather than presentations, as learningevents, all share the property that they appear during the learningprocess to impede learning, but they then often enhance learning asmeasured by post-training tests of retention and transfer. Conversely,manipulations such as keeping conditions constant and predictable andmassing trials on a given task often appear to enhance the rate oflearning during instruction or training, but then typically fail to supportlong-term retention and transfer” (Bjork, 2011, 8).

“If you can’t say it clearly, you don’t understand it yourself.” (JohnSearle)

“I had [...]during many years followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever apublished fact, a new observation or thought came across me, whichwas opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of itwithout fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such factsand thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory thanfavorable ones. Owing to this habit, very few objections were raisedagainst my views, which I had not at least noticed and attempted toanswer.” (Darwin 1958, 123)

you can’t force insight into a preconceiveddirection

no underlinedsentence will ever present itself when you need it in the developmentof an argument.

But, as Wilhelm von Humboldt, founder of theHumboldt University of Berlin and brother to the great explorerAlexander von Humboldt, put it, the professor is not there for thestudent and the student not for the professor. Both are only there forthe truth. And truth is always a public matter.

Be extra selective withquotes – don’t copy them to skip the step of really understanding

When he was asked if he missed anything in his life, he famouslyanswered: “If I want something, it’s more time. The only thing thatreally is a nuisance is the lack of time.” (Luhmann, Baecker, andStanitzek, 1987, 139)

a new conviction structured the next decade of my life: The un-annotated life was not worth living.

website redesign is now a synonym for bare-knuckle boxing

You may say that it isn ’ t necessary to read every last book. Well, it ’ s also true that in war you don ’ t have to kill every last soldier, but we still need every one of them. — General Stumm von Bordwehr, in Robert Musil, The Man without Qualities

That ‘taste’ is a very personal thing, and I don’t think I can really explain it. But I’m pretty sure it means that, for me, note-taking is a very long-term, gradual process of finding my way towards something; I just can’t quite articulate what that something is.

Most writing is chasing clout, rather than insight

So it was with somewhat mixed feelings that I learned some American high school teachers assign “The Sympathizer” as required reading in their classes. For the most part, I’m delighted. But then I worry: I don’t want to be anyone’s homework. I don’t want my book to be broccoli.

Books can indeed be dangerous. Until “Close Quarters,” I believed stories had the power to save me. That novel taught me that stories also had the power to destroy me. I was driven to become a writer because of the complex power of stories. They are not inert tools of pedagogy. They are mind-changing, world-changing.

I could quote Luhmann on this as well, who thought that "without writing one cannot think," But there is nothing peculiarly "Luhmannian" about this idea. Isaac Asimov is said to have said "Writing to me is simply thinking through my fingers." And, to give one other example, E. B. White (of "Strunk and White" fame) claimed that "writing is one way to go about thinking." In other words, writing is thinking. And since I do almost all my significant writing in ConnectedText these days, it might be called my "writing environment."

Values, rather than numbers, should drive decision-making. Ask whether what you measure accurately reflects your priorities. Many of our most cherished values are not amenable to quantitative measurement.

in Luhmann’s mind theprocess of writing things down enables disciplined thinking in the first place: “Underlying the filing tech-nique is the experience that without writing, there is no thinking.”22

“To me, the nature of the actor’s life is that we do the job, we do the best we can, and move on.”

If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.

When Simonides offered to teach the Athenian statesman Themistocles the art of Memory, Cicero reports that he refused. "Teach me not the art of remem- bering," he said, "but the art of forgetting, for I remember things I do not wish to remember, but I cannot forget things I wish to forget."

And pundits quipped, "Nothing is more common than a fool with a strong memory."

In 1580 Montaigne declared that "a good memory is generally joined to a weak judgment."

The English common law was "immemorial" custom which ran to a "time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary." "In the profound ignorance of letters which formerly overspread the whole west- em world," Sir William Blackstone noted in 1765, "letters were intirely traditional, for this plain reason, that the nations among which they pre- vailed had but little idea of writing. Thus the British as well as the Gallic druids committed all their laws as well as learning to memory; and it is said of the primitive Saxons here, as well as their brethren on the conti- nent, that leges

"Memory," agreed Cicero, "is the treasury and guardian of all things."

"Memory," said Aeschylus, "is the mother of all wis- dom."

the card index functions as an en-gine of variety rather than as an engine of redundancy.

You know you have to read "between the lines" to get the most out of anything. I want to persuade you to do something equally important in the course of your reading. I want to persuade you to write between the lines. Unless you do, you are not likely to do the most efficient kind of reading.

Productivity is a virtue only to the person you're producing for.

As John Palmer points out in his brilliant posts on Spatial Interfaces and Spatial Software, “Humans are spatial creatures [who] experience most of life in relation to space”.

Any Negro who wishes to live must live with danger from his first day, and no experience can ever be casual to him, no Negro can saunter down a street with any real certainty that violence will not visit him on his walk.

The hipster is an enfant terrible turned inside out.

First and foremost, I do it for me. The memex I've created by thinking about and then describing every interesting thing I've encountered is hugely important for how I understand the world. It's the raw material of every novel, article, story and speech I write.

What Alexander had found is that we’ve fundamentally misunderstood what addiction is. It isn’t a moral failing. It isn’t a disease. Addiction is an adaptation to your environment. It’s not you; it’s the cage you live in.”

As Wilson quips, “an unregulated organism is a dead organism.”

Mr. West added, “The normal path to holiness in marriage is to sanctify the marriage bed, not to sacrifice the marriage bed.”

We should be careful that we do not become our own tools.

Francis Bacon, for instance, thought that "some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention."

Serious reading will require just as much effort as it has always required.

He also quotes another scientist, who speaks of "controlled sloppiness" as a principle that "permits the occurrence of fruitful accidents", tracing this idea to the fact that scientific work is never without loose ends and that in the absence of a rigid plan it is possible to pay attention to the untidy ends, which ultimately "may turn out to be of considerable importance." Indeed, "compulsive tidiness in experimentation" may be even more crippling than in other areas of life (193).

The crowning reward of general planning is that it will preserve a freedom of inquiry, a freedom of opportunity, that it is not only rational and efficient, but is also a part of a good way of life" (192).

St. Bonaventura (1221-1274) found that there are basically four ways of 'making books' (modi faciendi librum):"A man might write the work of others, adding and changing nothing in which case he is simply called a 'scribe' (scriptor).""Another writes the work of others with additions which are not his own; and he is called a 'compiler (compilator).""Another writes both others’ work and his own, but with others’ work in principal place, adding his own for purposes of explanation; and he is called a 'commentator' (commentator) …""Another writes both his own work and others' but with his own work in principal place adding others' for purposes of confirmation; and such a man should be called an 'author' (auctor).’"

“One of the vital things for a writer who’s writing a book, which is a lengthy project and is going to take about a year, is how to keep the momentum going. It is the same with a young person writing an essay. They have got to write four or five or six pages. But when you are writing it for a year, you go away and you have to come back. I never come back to a blank page; I always finish about halfway through. To be confronted with a blank page is not very nice. But Hemingway, a great American writer, taught me the finest trick when you are doing a long book, which is, he simply said in his own words, “When you are going good, stop writing.” And that means that if everything’s going well and you know exactly where the end of the chapter’s going to go and you know just what the people are going to do, you don’t go on writing and writing until you come to the end of it, because when you do, then you say, well, where am I going to go next? And you get up and you walk away and you don’t want to come back because you don’t know where you want to go. But if you stop when you are going good, as Hemingway said…then you know what you are going to say next. You make yourself stop, put your pencil down and everything, and you walk away. And you can’t wait to get back because you know what you want to say next and that’s lovely and you have to try and do that. Every time, every day all the way through the year. If you stop when you are stuck, then you are in trouble!” ― Roald Dahl

Even so, new inventions have always influenced literary production, as Friedrich Nietzsche, who struggled with a semi-spherical typewriter, once lyrically observed: “The writing ball is a thing like me: made of / iron / yet easily twisted on journeys.”

I’d fallen into the trap that the philosopher Jacques Derrida identified in an interview from the mid-nineties. “With the computer, everything is rapid and so easy,” he complained. “An interminable revision, an infinite analysis is already on the horizon.”

The slip box provides combinatorial possibilities which were never planned, never preconceived, or conceived in this way.

Usually it is more fruitful to look for formulations of problems that relate heterogeneous things with each other.

“Any large room looks wrong without the appropriate number of people in it,” Mr. Byers writes. “An unused living room looks empty. An empty ballroom is absolutely creepy; it looks as if it is waiting desperately for something to happen. A library, on the other hand, is delightful when full but still especially attractive when empty.”

When we simply guess as to whathumans in other times and places might be up to, we almostinvariably make guesses that are far less interesting, far less quirky– in a word, far less human than what was likely going on.

‘Security’ takes manyforms. There is the security of knowing one has a statistically smallerchance of getting shot with an arrow. And then there’s the security ofknowing that there are people in the world who will care deeply if oneis.

Oscar Wilde declared he was an advocateof socialism because he didn’t like having to look at poor people orlisten to their stories

Among the most eloquent commentaries on this wholephenomenon is to be found in a private letter written by BenjaminFranklin to a friend:When an Indian Child has been brought up among us,taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet ifhe goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramblewith them there is no persuading him ever to return, andthat this is not natural merely as Indians, but as men, isplain from this, that when white persons of either sexhave been taken prisoner young by the Indians, and livedawhile among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, andtreated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail withthem to stay among the English, yet in a Short time theybecome disgusted with our manner of life, and the careand pains that are necessary to support it, and take thefirst opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, fromwhence there is no reclaiming them. One instance Iremember to have heard, where the person was to bebrought home to possess a good Estate; but finding somecare necessary to keep it together, he relinquished it to ayounger brother, reserving to himself nothing but a gunand match-Coat, with which he took his way again to theWilderness.30

The framers of the US Constitution, for example, were quiteexplicitly anti-democratic and made clear in their own publicstatements that they designed the Federal Government in largepart to head off the risk of ‘democracy’ breaking out in one ofthe former colonies (they were particularly worried aboutPennsylvania). Meanwhile, actual direct democratic decision-making had been practised regularly in various parts of Africaor Amazonia, or for that matter in Russian or French peasantassemblies, for thousands of years; see Graeber 2007b.

We are projects of collective self-creation. What if we approached human history that way? What if wetreat people, from the beginning, as imaginative, intelligent, playfulcreatures who deserve to be understood as such? What if, instead oftelling a story about how our species fell from some idyllic state ofequality, we ask how we came to be trapped in such tight conceptualshackles that we can no longer even imagine the possibility ofreinventing ourselves?

Yet the existence of an independent and goodwill-based web is endangered : threatened by the never-ending technology race which makes the websites more difficult and expensive to set up, by the overwhelming commercial advertising pressure, and soon by dissymetric networks, Network Computers, proprietary networks, broadcasting, all aiming at the transformation of the citizen into a basic consumer.

there's an expectation that in "good history" (or probably good anything else) reading and understanding primary sources precedes interpretation.

“That’s one of the exciting things about math,” said Jack Morava, a mathematician at Johns Hopkins University and the inventor of Morava K-theory. “You can go through a door and you wind up in a completely different universe. It’s very much like Alice in Wonderland.”

Postmodernism is not a license to shoplift.

And the well-known jurist Jacques Cujas stated that ‘hee is a Learned Man non qui multa legit sed qui can fitly turne to Authors et use them according to his occasions. Non qui multa memoria teneat sed qui optima in libris optimis posset inve-nire’ (he is a learned man not the one who reads a number of books but the one who can fitly turn to authors and use them according to his occasion. [He is a learned man] not the one who keeps in mind a number of things but the one who can find the best passages in the best books).21

Johannes Sturm, for example, admitted that it was not important after all to remember; it was far more important to know how to retrieve what in the meantime had been forgotten.20

Drexel, for instance, held those teach-ers ridiculous who taught students to build up houses and rooms by means of imagination and stock them with images of memorable subjects (imagines agentes).16 According to the German Jesuit, the effort was not only huge but students wasted their time because images escape from these artificial places

an inquiry into filing systems is an inquiry into how society manages its own memory.11

Through an inner structure of recursive links and semantic pointers, a card index achieves a proper autonomy; it behaves as a ‘communication partner’ who can recommend unexpected associations among different ideas. I suggest that in this respect pre-adaptive advances took root in early modern Europe, and that this basic requisite for information pro-cessing machines was formulated largely by the keyword ‘order’.

The card index appeared to be simply what it was: a wooden box for paper slips. On one of these file cards, Luhmann once summarized his own reflections on just such an experience: ‘People come, they see everything and nothing more than that, just like in porn movies; consequently, they leave disappointed’ (Figure 1).8

“It does illustrate a good point,” he said. “Which is that all drama is about wanting something very badly and not getting what you want.”

Recently, Strong, concerned about press reports suggesting that he was “difficult,” sent me a text message saying, “I don’t particularly think ease or even accord are virtues in creative work, and sometimes there must even be room for necessary roughness, within the boundaries dictated by the work.”

“ The library is the treasury of all wealth of the human mind in which one takes refuge, ” Leibniz writes in a letter to Friedrich of Steinberg in October 1696. 5

“ There are so many books that we lack the time even to read the titles, ” notes the Italian bibliographer Anton Francesco Doni in 1550, already pointing toward the increasing reading of titles and footnotes as a principal reaction to too many texts.

appropriate metaphors open our eyes to more than denotation: they produce a surplus of meaning that stimulates thought.

“ Card catalogs can do anything ” — this is the slogan Fortschritt GmbH

books are a means of listening to the thoughts of others so that you can hear your own thoughts more clearly.

Lexicographers often show more credulity in positing origins of phrases than they ever would in reporting the etymologies of individual words.

er the years, writers (and speakers) have experimented with numer- ous images in expressions with the same general structure and probable meaning as worse end of the staff and short end of the stick

Like Creation stories every where, cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. They tell us who we are. We are inevitably shaped by them no matter how distant they may be from our consciousness. One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banish-ment. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a cocreator of the good green world that would be the home of her descendants. The other was an exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road to her real home in heaven.

when I browse from someone’s blog over to their Substack it feels like going from a sweet little neighborhood into a staid corporate park. A little piece of joy dies in me when that happens because it’s another reminder of the corporatization of the web.

it must be acknowledged that conservatism is never more respectable than in education, for nowhere are the risks of change greater.

He goes on to warn that “the broader evangelical population has increasingly heeded populist leaders who dismiss the results of modern learning from whatever source.”

“There have always been mean people who cloak their unkindness in religious devotion,” one minister in a conservative denomination told me.

In his words, “The gentleness of Jesus was utterly discarded” by those who felt he wasn’t championing their cultural and political agendas aggressively enough.

“People come to believe what they are most thoroughly and intensively catechized to believe, and that catechesis comes not from the churches but from the media they consume, or rather the media that consume them. The churches have barely better than a snowball’s chance in hell of shaping most people’s lives.”

None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its cussedness; but we can try. - Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar

I am, by calling, a dealer in words; and words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. Not only do words infect, ergotise, narcotise, and paralyse, but they enter into and colour the minutest cells of the brain, very much as madder mixed with a stag’s food at the Zoo colours the growth of the animal’s antlers.

Try your best to be right, but don't worry when you're wrong. Repeatedly. If you feel uncomfortable, or like an impostor, good. You're pushing yourself. Don't assume you know everything, but try your best anyway, and let the internet correct you when you are inevitably wrong. Wear your noobyness on your sleeve.

The liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill, writing at about the same time as Hawthorne, made a similar argument. Much of his most famous book, On Liberty, is dedicated not to governmental restraints on human liberty but to the threat posed by social conformism, by “the demand that all other people shall resemble ourselves.”

But the real, and nonpartisan, lesson is this: No one—of any age, in any profession—is safe. In the age of Zoom, cellphone cameras, miniature recorders, and other forms of cheap surveillance technology, anyone’s comments can be taken out of context; anyone’s story can become a rallying cry for Twitter mobs on the left or the right. Anyone can then fall victim to a bureaucracy terrified by the sudden eruption of anger. And once one set of people loses the right to due process, so does everybody else. Not just professors but students; not just editors of elite publications but random members of the public.

“It’s not that everybody’s famous for 15 minutes,” Tamar Gendler, the dean of the faculty of arts and sciences at Yale, told me. “It’s that everybody gets damned for 15 seconds.”

Twitter, the president of one major cultural institution told me, “is the new public sphere.” Yet Twitter is unforgiving, it is relentless, it doesn’t check facts or provide context.

The censoriousness, the shunning, the ritualized apologies, the public sacrifices—these are rather typical behaviors in illiberal societies with rigid cultural codes, enforced by heavy peer pressure.

The censoriousness, the shunning, the ritualized apologies, the public sacrifices—these are typical behaviors in illiberal societies with rigid cultural codes.

Nobody is perfect; nobody is pure; and once people set out to interpret ambiguous incidents in a particular way, it’s not hard to find new evidence.

Nicholas Christakis, the Yale professor of medicine and sociology who was at the center of a campus and social-media storm in 2015, is also an expert on the functioning of human social groups. He reminded me that ostracism “was considered an enormous sanction in ancient times—to be cast out of your group was deadly.” It is unsurprising, he said, that people in these situations would consider suicide.

Lily Hajdú-Gimes, a celebrated Hungarian psychoanalyst of that era, diagnosed the trauma of forced conformity in patients, as well as in herself. “I play the game that is offered by the regime,” she told friends, “though as soon as you accept that rule you are in a trap.”

Nuance and ambiguity are essential to good fiction. They are also essential to the rule of law: We have courts, juries, judges, and witnesses precisely so that the state can learn whether a crime has been committed before it administers punishment. We have a presumption of innocence for the accused. We have a right to self-defense. We have a statute of limitations.

Boehm: Professor Luhmann, which critics of your systems theory you fear the most? Luhmann: The stupid ones.

I want a [[community]], not an [[audience]]. Audience is stuff like reach, personality/celebrity, spectacle, anxiety, alienation, competition. Community is more like voice, discussion, comradery.

Order is a necessity, but it must serve us, not we it.

it is already clear in this case that the plan will spring from the materials, not the materials from the plan.

I am reflected in my work; J must also be reflected in the means I use, if I have adapted them wisely to the work and to my- self.

A new idea acts retrospectively; a torch throws its light behind as well as before. Materials that were laid aside take on a new aspect when they are classified by means of an idea. Then everything within us is reborn and animated with a new life. But for that to happen, the paths of light must be open, our thoughts must be in order and linked consecutively one with another.

Fifty data are no better than one, if they all stand only in the same relation to the fundamental idea; un- coordinated they remain fruitless,