Alan Jacobs

Here are the relevant facts: Oxford University Press USA is a “crossover” publisher, which means that they’re an academic press but they publish many books meant to have some trade success also, e.g. showing up in the local Barnes & Noble.

I’m still trying to discover (a) why no copies of my book were available in the U.S. on pub day; (b) why, if no copies of the book would be available on pub day, pub day was not delayed until they were available; (c) why nobody at OUP bothered to tell me…

It’s been a rough day, so: whisky, chocolate, Sinatra

Turns out that this is not really the publication date for my book at all.

It’s pub day for my biography of Dorothy L.

I’ve been suffering from eyestrain, so for my evening reading have turned to Stephen Fry narrating the Sherlock Holmes stories, which ranks as one of the three best narrations I have ever heard, the other two being Fiona Shaw’s The Mill on the Floss and A…

Paul Chan: Sometime during the mid-2010s, I noticed photographers, videographers, and artists of all kinds referring to what they made as “content,” as opposed to photos, videos, or art.

When AI can mute my TV during commercials and unmute it when the show/game comes back on, I’ll be all in.

As we’re seeing more and more sophisticated robot/drone warfare, I find myself wondering whether the next step is what Adam Roberts described in his fabulous 2010 novel New Model Army — which I wrote about here.

Currently reading: Loren Eiseley : Collected Essays on Evolution, Nature, and the Cosmos by Loren Eiseley.

Whenever an organization says “There is no place for XYZ in this organization” or “We have zero tolerance for XYZ” the proper translation is: “Making this statement is all we’re going to do about XYZ, and you’ll just have to deal with it.”

I decided a couple of weeks ago that I needed to write a biggish essay on what it means to me to be a Southerner.

Currently reading: Loren Eiseley : Collected Essays on Evolution, Nature, and the Cosmos by Loren Eiseley.

Just a note on how I use micro.blog, in response to some emails: not as a social-media platform.

Really interesting comment by Ethan Iverson in his interview with Deborah Gordon, the owner of the Village Vanguard.

Always interesting when you’re reading a work of history, in this case Charles Norris Cochrane’s matchless Christianity and Classical Culture, and find something that shines a bright and direct light on your own moment.

Inordinately pleased with my little hack of hanging the jacket of the album I’m listening to from a binder clip.

Currently reading: Middlemarch by George Eliot.

I’m very frustrated by Ezra Klein’s timidity in his interview with Jensen Huang.

Chilling after a nice long walk through the neighborhood, during which two different people I don’t know said “Hi Angus!”

When Grant conquered Vicksburg, did Lincoln say, “The Union now controls the full length of the Mississippi River”?

New post at Cosmos Malick: IRL.

These are just lovely.

Clare Coffey: European resistance to air conditioning is often framed as a story of puritanical self-flagellation, as an insistence on managing energy crises by a regime of perpetual austerity rather than building out clean, abundant energy sources.

Even mighty heroes need to have a sit-down now and then.

South Pole of Mars.

Robin Sloan: The consensus vision seems to involve AI working for you day-to-day, a constant ambient presence, sparkles in everything; even cautious Apple has succumbed.

Behind the JSTOR paywall, but the essay that made Wendell Berry an essential guide and companion for me is “Standing by Words.”

An Annie Dillard essay I think of often: “Singing with the Fundamentalists” (1985).

Brent Nonbgri: The Machine for Casting Lots for Positions at the Chariot Races

It’s always fun when Neal Stephenson goes down a physical-mechanics rabbit hole.

Finished reading: The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore.

“Mr Pochettino?

Phil Christman: She called herself a “gregarious recluse,” but there was in her single-mindedness no retreat from the world.

On wherewithal and the lack thereof, for my BMAC supporters.

Jill Lepore, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State: This book is an inquiry into what humans mean and intend in abandoning constitutional democracy, the liberal nation-state, and even humanity itself for rule by automation, government by machine, and…

Endgame for the Open Web - Anil Dash: Now, the hectobillionaires have begun their final assault on the last, best parts of what's still open, and likely won't rest until they've either brought all of the independent and noncommercial parts of the Internet…

A tech story that I think has been underplayed: Google’s collapse into incompetence.

Showed up in class today and found on the desk flowers, chocolate and a consolation card signed by all my students.

My old friend Carlos Eire: Ever since 2013, this class [The Catholic Intellectual Tradition, at Yale] has attracted highly motivated students who are eager to explore a dimension of thought previously hidden from them, simply because the texts we read and…

One of my students in last semester’s Great Texts in Fantasy class gave me a copy of Robert Macfarlane’s Is a River Alive?

When you’re writing a historical narrative, you can’t explain everything — you have to assume that your audience has a certain level of knowledge.

Currently listening: Mingus Ah Um.

To Daniel Moran's question about the reasons for the decline of The Simpsons, I have an answer: There are only so many stories you can tell and jokes you can make about characters who are forbidden to change.

I keep hoping for the barrage of AI-generated author-scamming emails to slow down, but instead they keep coming — and are getting worse.

Ted Gioia: One of the reasons why many historical cycles seem to recur every hundred years, more or less, is that the people who learned the lessons of this mostly forgotten past are dead and gone.

Anastasia Berg: How will encouraging students to use AI when writing papers in political theory, philosophy, literature, or history deepen learning?

Today in my Christian Renaissance of the Twentieth Century class, we’ll be discussing Jacques Maritain on sacred art.