Gilbert Keith Chesterton KC-SG (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English Christian apologist writer.[2] Chesterton's wit, paradoxical style, and defence of tradition made him a dominant figure in early 20th-century literature. Chesterton created the fictional priest-detective Father Brown,[3] and wrote on apologetics, such as his works Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man.[4][5] Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an orthodox Christian and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting from high church Anglicanism. Biographers have identified him as a successor to such Victorian authors as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, John Henry Newman and John Ruskin.[6] He has been referred to as the "prince of paradox".[7] Of his writing style, Time observes: "Whenever possible, Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out."[4] His writings were an influence on Jorge Luis Borges, who compared his work with that of Edgar Allan Poe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton (more)

William Hugh Kenner (January 7, 1923 – November 24, 2003) was a Canadian literary scholar, critic and professor. His studies on Modernist literature often analyzed the work of James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Samuel Beckett. His major study of the period, The Pound Era, argued for Pound as the central figure of Modernism, and is considered one of the most important works on the topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Kenner (more)

"The medium is the message" (more)

John Robb on Marshall McLuhan on War. Source: "War and Peace in the Global Village", 1968. Marshall McLuhan envisioned WW3 as a vast online conflict very similar to what we are currently experiencing. A conflict between the new identities and thinking patterns spawned by rapid technological change and those still clinging to traditional identities and patterns. (more)

AI safety level: vs p(doom) (more)

Today is my 20-Year WikiLog-iversary - going back to 2002-02-05-a. (more)

Mark McGrath: LinkedIn Isn't for Networking. It's the Digital Day-Spa for Corporate Conformity. Spend enough time on LinkedIn and the air starts to feel filtered. It's not just the self-congratulation. It's not just the corporate memes. It's the environment itself. The platform doesn't invite discovery and innovation. It rewards safety. This is The Digital Day Spa. (more)

a John Boyd briefing

OODA guru https://substack.com/@markjmcgrath, https://www.linkedin.com/in/markjmcgrath1/ (more)

book Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd. By Frans P.B. Osinga, Copyright 2007. ISBN:0415459524

way-finding, sense-making? (more)

Observation Orientation Decision Action (Observation, Orientation (model?), Decision/Decision Making, Action) (more)

see Model, Mental Model, Sense Making, Theory Building, WorldBuilding (more)

Peter Naur: Programming as Theory Building (more)

process of Making Sense for yourself? subtype of model building (more)

Epicureanism, less commonly Epicurism,[1] is a school of philosophy founded in 307 BCE and based upon the teachings of Epicurus, an ancient Greek philosopher. Epicurus was an atomist and materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to religious skepticism and a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Epicureanism was originally a challenge to Platonism, and its main opponent later became Stoicism. It is a form of hedonism insofar as it declares pleasure to be its sole intrinsic goal. However, the concept that the absence of pain and fear constitutes the greatest pleasure, and its advocacy of a simple life, make it very different from hedonism as colloquially understood. Following the Cyrenaic philosopher Aristippus, Epicurus believed that the greatest good was to seek modest, sustainable pleasure in the form of a state of ataraxia (tranquility and freedom from fear) and aponia (the absence of bodily pain) through knowledge of the workings of the world and limiting desires. Correspondingly, Epicurus and his followers generally withdrew from politics because it could lead to frustrations and ambitions that would conflict with their pursuit of virtue and peace of mind.* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism (more)

htmx gives you access to AJAX, CSS Transitions, WebSockets and Server Sent Events directly in HTML, using attributes, so you can build modern user interfaces with the simplicity and power of hypertext. htmx is small (~14k min.gz’d), dependency-free, extendable, IE11 compatible & has reduced code base sizes by 67% when compared with react. https://htmx.org/ (more)

Practice of journaling in between your tasks to log them, and your thoughts about them. (more)

Maggie Lindsy Haberman (born October 30, 1973) is an American journalist, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and a political analyst for CNN. She previously worked as a political reporter for the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and Politico. She wrote about Donald Trump for those publications and rose to prominence covering his campaign, first presidency, and inter-presidency for the Times.[1] In 2022, she published the best-selling book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie_Haberman (more)

Jeffrey Epstein's Sick Story Played Out for Years in Plain Sight. Alexander Acosta had explained, breezily, apparently, that back in the day he’d had just one meeting on the Epstein case. He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told” to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” he told his interviewers in the Trump transition, who evidently thought that was a sufficient answer and went ahead and hired Acosta. (more)