If you want to know what most people’s inner lives are like, imagine the Old Testament, but starring you instead of the Jews.
Sep 042020
Sep 032020
There is a happiness in widely-shared enforced misery that goes a long way toward explaining nostalgia for Stalinism, or broadcast television.
Sep 022020
The Victorians used to tell us fiction rots the mind when in fact it rots the soul.
Sep 012020
The soul of brevity is silence.
Aug 312020
There are reference works that ought to exist but do not, being too much trouble to assemble. The Encyclopedia of Musical Plagiarism is one, and The Historical Atlas of English Pronunciation is another.
Aug 282020
There is a surprising incuriosity about how one’s political opponents, apparently functioning humans, arrive at beliefs that will lead to the destruction of life on earth. Stupid and Evil are the popular theories of mind.
Aug 272020
A single betrayal, revealed at the proper time, can retrospectively poison a man’s whole life.
Aug 262020
It is a world of men who look like Unix system administrators, without the Unix system administration skills.
Aug 252020
The trouble starts with people thinking they should have a vote themselves, and from there it’s a short step to thinking everybody should.
Aug 242020
Many false beliefs are instrumental, but no one holds them instrumentally.