Finished reading: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel đ
Great day at the used book store đ
I’ve been working on an essay on Sam Bankman-Fried and Sam Altman for a couple weeks now. Today seemed like a good day to finish it.
Why are the traits they shareâamong others, naivetĂŠ, narcissism, love for humanity but only in the abstract, reducing complex realities to simple equationsâso common?
I like the new Wikipedia app⌠but it doesnât always get everything right:
Finished reading: *The New Leviathans* by John Gray
Finished reading: The New Leviathans by John Gray. A book with no single overarching thesis beyond an examination of how liberal democracy is in crisis in the West, and how the alternatives at the moment, primarily Russia and China, are… unsavory. Gray’s book, just 3 brisk chapters, helpfully resuscitates Hobbes as interested in the wide range of forms Leviathan can take to provide order, peace, and freedom to its citizens. Unfortunately, all of these are more or less totalitarianâwhich is why Gray finds in Hobbes a helpful thinker for our age, in which the world is converging on forms of surveillance capitalism:
Current listening: a new Arvo Pärt album, Tractus, featuring a new, chamber-choir arrangement of Pärtâs setting of words from a sermon of John Henry Newman. đś
Rest in peace, Terence Davies. đď¸
The first film I saw of his was his relatively recent documentary about Liverpool, Of Time & the Cityâa film of great beauty, full of profound reflection on memory & how profoundly the world has changed since the 1960s.
Here’s a quotation that reflects his sensibility, from the NYT obituary linked above:
âThe first thing that goes is subtlety. The first thing that goes is any kind of restraint or even wit sometimes. I donât know how to deal with that in the modern world.â
No words strike fear into a Minnesota United fanâs heart quite like âmust-win home game.â #COYL â˝ď¸
Currently reading: Your Face Belongs to Us by Kashmir Hill đ
Currently reading: Toward the Winter Solstice by Timothy Steele đ