What Happens After A.I. Destroys College Writing?
The demise of the English paper will end a long intellectual tradition, but it’s also an opportunity to reëxamine the purpose of higher education.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/07/07/the-end-of-the-english-paper
Meditation: Poetry and Shameless Obscurity
There’s something about this, my chosen art form, that reeks of desperation: Not just the reasonable and excusable desire to be beautiful and observant, but also the vanity of wanting to be profound, of wanting to be mysterious, perhaps of obscurity and indecision.
https://miksimum.com/2025/07/16/meditation-poetry-and-shameless-obscurity/
"I knew that my grandfather had been in an orphanage—didn’t I? Was I learning about this only now, or was I remembering it? How had I not known I knew this?" —Jessica Winter for The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/07/21/what-i-inherited-from-my-criminal-great-grandparents?src=longreads #mystery #memory #family #essay
Das Bedürfnis nach Rückzug
Du ziehst dich zurück, nicht aus Feigheit, nicht weil du nichts mehr willst, sondern weil die Welt zu laut geworden ist und du nicht mehr unterscheiden kannst, ob das Pochen in deinem Kopf noch dein Herz ist oder nur der Druck von außen.
Und du merkst, wie gut es tut, allein zu sein, nicht einsam, nur still – wie ein Wald, in dem niemand läuft, aber alles lebt.
Vielleicht ist Rückzug kein Rückschritt. Vielleicht ist es der einzige Weg, wieder bei dir anzukommen, in einem Inneren, das sich oft genug verloren hat in Blicken, Meinungen, Rollen.
Du brauchst kein Publikum für deine Existenz.
Keinen Applaus für dein Überleben.
Du willst nicht ständig erklären, warum du bist, wie du bist – du willst einfach nur sein dürfen, ohne diese ständige Rechtfertigungsschleife, ohne dieses Gefühl, dass Sichtbarkeit ein Preis ist, den du mit Erschöpfung zahlst.
Und in deinem Rückzug liegt Kraft.
Nicht als Pose, sondern als Entscheidung.
Du kehrst nicht der Welt den Rücken – du kehrst zu dir zurück.
Und das ist mehr als genug.
Obscurae salutationes, Avabelle Noir
#Gedanken #Gedankensplitter #Fragmentarium
#NoirsGedanken #NoirsFragmente #Schreiben #KreativesSchreiben #Gothaesthetic #RomanticGoth #Goth #GothicVibes #Poesie #Philosophie #Prosa #Essay #Emotional #Dunkel #Düster #Melancholie #Gothic #Gotik #Subkultur #Kultur #KunterbunteSubkultur #Sehnsucht #Schmerz #Gefühle #QueerGoth
I missed last month's #solarpunk essay from @AndrewDanaHudson , but I think the 10-year-check-in is a worthy read:
https://www.solarshades.club/p/the-political-dimensions-of-solarpunk10
The world has changed. Solarpunk influenced it, even without a single Masterpiece. We are continuing to build from multiple sides.
People are doing a lot on the ground - whether in the North or the South - and we're finally getting a language which can share their stories.
"One afternoon, as I stood in the aisles of the public library, the desire for a coherent cosmology, and rituals to go with it, hit me like a wave of homesickness."
In a new Longreads essay, Erika Howsare reflects on her search for secular ritual: https://longreads.com/2025/07/10/attention-ritual-art-observation/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
Letzte #Chance: Die deutsche #Politik der letzten fünf Jahre unterm #Mikroskop eines Topjournalisten
https://www.l-iz.de/bildung/buecher/2025/07/letzte-chance-deutsche-politik-letzte-funf-jahre-mikroskop-topjournalist-629050
#Rezensionen #Bücher #Essay
I have a new piece at Vague Visages about Dirk Bogarde and the spirit of rebellion in post-war Britain:
https://vaguevisages.com/2025/07/08/dirk-bogarde-essay-movie-film-post-war-rebellion/
Why Compare the Present to the Past?
Thinking via historical analogy has become the preferred way to confront our anxieties.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/06/30/history-analogies-geopolitics-policy-ideology/
Paywall Free: https://archive.is/XAYZN
My personal essay "Insides In and Outsides Out" just went up on Breath and Shadow. https://www.abilitymaine.org/bs2025spring/%22insides-in-and-outsides-out%22 #disability #essay #WritingCommunity
A few months ago I talked about a BIG THING I was writing.
Well, I finished a second draft, and it feels ready enough for people to read. It's called:
'Why Free-Culture: Art, Knowledge and Culture as Commons'.
It's the longest thing I have written and I am happy with it, but it is not the final version. Here's a link to read it:
There's also the .odt file in that repository, so do what you will with it! It is licensed CCBYSA 4.0. You can also see v0.1 in case you're curious about changes.
I would love any feedback anyone would care to give me, so please share far and wide. :)
Thanks for your time, and solidarity!
Just finished watching this great video piece by John Oliver on his Last Week Tonight show on AI slop and gen AI altogether. It's sad that most companies big and small alike are embracing this BS.
To be clear, #THATrpg #essay #lisp
Link: https://www.dreamsongs.com/ArtOfLisp.html
HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44281016
Note that Richard P. Gabriel also wrote a book on the practice of writers' workshops including lisp writing as well as traditional writing author communities, which he straddled with his poetry books.
We Should Free All WordPress Plugins and Themes
What if we democratized everything in WordPress, and not just publishing? What if we freed all themes and plugins? How far could we fly?
#administration #essay #FAIR #wordpress
https://halfelf.org/2025/we-should-free-all-wordpress-plugins-and-themes/
With coincidences galore, my impressions of the Brutalist as a Hungarian.
https://fanfare.pub/the-brutalist-a-hungarian-s-review-2e596915fb30
#movies #films #TheBrutalist #Hungary #essay #opinion #Popculture #nonfiction #writer #WritingCommunity
Jun 6
8 min
Gaming out a society of psychopaths. The funny part about.. that I game out, is that no society of psychopaths who all understand that everyone is out to rule the world like they are would ever tolerate any level of wealth inequality. Such as society would tend to converge on constant warfare and destruction or tyranny and destruction…
If we were exactly like what conservatives say you would never tolerate billionaires
Good morning!
I wrote about my little mighty moka pot, and the bliss of ritual.
I wasn't going to publish this one. It's a little different than my normal essays. But here we are. What the hell.
I hope you enjoy.
#coffee #design #mokapot #essay #blog
https://fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/the-bliss-of-good-enough-an-ode-to-my-moka-pot/
"In its simplest form, a whale’s death becomes a source of life for years beyond its time. It is a transformation that turns death into life on an almost incomprehensible scale."
Omnia Saed for Atmos Magazine: https://atmos.earth/after-the-fall/