The dominant system today is built on analysis. And it’s worth remembering that the root meaning of analysis is the reduction of things into parts.

Holistic thinking, in contrast, is always inherently Romantic. You can also call this visionary thinking.

Ted Gioia’s Substack is consistently good. Sometimes it’s great, as in 25 Propositions about the New Romanticism, which he made a public post.

This is one of the best things I’ve read in a long while - an unironic analysis of our tendency to analyze everything to death (“we murder to dissect”).

Iain McGilchrist would approve.

Belated Christmas from far-away friends. I had no idea such a thing existed.

I seem to be on a crunchy streak here, which is ironic since I’m a klutzy intellectualoid. Anyhoo, one of the projects that excites me is the American College of Building Arts in Charleston. They have YouTube videos also if you want a kinetic portrayal.

Wish there were crunchy kids here.

VISION FOR A NEW CABINET: - Front Porch Republic

Very crunchy.

I’ll keep this cool, though I’m tempted to rage: It’s very hard to find a plausible motivation for snatching Maduro. It sure is heck isn’t “blood for oil.”

Megan McArdle has a great, dispassionate explainer episode at her Reasonably Optimistic podcast.

I’ve to to remember that paying for B1G (the Big10 app) gets me access to Penn State wrestling. They are sooo good!

How many snuff videos, from how many different angles and sources, am I supposed to subject myself to in order to “draw my own conclusions” about the Minneapolis ICE shooting? And after I’ve drawn my own conclusions? Then what?

So far I’ve watched zero.

If you don’t know how to explain something, why not just make it all up? Welcome to another important feature of the left hemisphere’s world: confabulation.

Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things, describing the left hemisphere when the right hemisphere is impaired or disabled.

Sounds a lot like AI, doesn’t it? McGilchrist has done wonders disenthralling me of AI techno-utopianism.

Streaming Impressionist music as I work, I’m struck by how often a piece arrests me with its beauty, so I look to see what’s playing and it’s Ravel, again and again.

I know the movie 10 made Bolero even more famous, but there’s a heckuva lot more to Ravel than that.

Democrat Presidential candidates for 2028? I’d suggest Rahm Emanuel. We’ll need a pit bull, not a pussycat, to clean up the mess MAGA leaves behind - and not far Left.

(My suggestion is based on a podcast some months ago; the linked Free Press article merely reminded me.)

(I’m neither D nor R.)

Does “Ritz-Carlton Indianapolis” sound like an oxymoron?

Epiphany: If I’m going to reduce my time wallowing in politics, I need a conscious (and seemingly difficult) change of who and what I read, which will mean bidding farewell to some favorite people and publications I hang onto mostly by habit.

The Mevedev Corollary. It’s easy to get caught up in gee-whiz, golly-gee awe of the described technological superiority of our weapons and tactics in the capture of Maduro. But who is this author and where does he get his detailed information?

Oh: and then there’s his concluding section III.

Epiphany in the Christian West, Theophany in the Christian East. Theophany - Showing the World to be the World.

These days, it feels countercultural to be utterly indifferent, even contemptuous, of all the gaa-gaa over escaping to Mars (or colonizing it) after we’ve so royally screwed up earth.

I have fellow chorister friend who literally operates and monitors a Mars Rover for his livelihood. It’s perfectly honorable work, probably contributing at least a bit to the store of human knowledge.

But sending people to live there is another matter. I don’t want it done with my tax dollars. I detest that we’re forever excitedly coming up with tech-based solutions to tech-induced problems. (Yes, my Mounjaro probably qualifies to a technology to counteract a life of too much highly-processed foods. I know. You got me there.)

There: I said it. Anyone else bored or repulsed by the thought of Mars colonization?

On the way to Kansas City, Mo., Amtrak passenger shoots another passenger dead, apparently at random and unprovoked. Jury: Amtrak owes the deceased’s family $158.8 mil in damages. District court: Make that $44 mil. Eighth Circuit: Make that zero. The crime wasn’t foreseeable.

Typically breezy case summary from Short Circuits blog

TIL threnody: a song or hymn of mourning composed or performed as a memorial to a dead person.

“God’s gift to warthogs” - an oft-shared allusion between me and my wife. Here’s the source, apropos of your preparation for any New Year’s Eve party you might be attending.

For all of us who rolled into the year wondering “How much more chaotic could a second Trump term be?” 2025 did not disappoint.

Michelle Cottle, The 2025 Politics Yearbook (gift link cuz I have some left this month)

Happy Anniversary:

1759

Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease at £45 per annum to the St. James’s Gate Brewery in Dublin and began brewing Guinness.

Glory days: A years-ago choral performance of Mexican baroque music came up in conversation. I found the recording and listened to it with delight at how good we were that night. Gratifyingly, the last three minutes recorded the standing ovation, which we really earned on that one. Much, much credit to our Artistic Director from those days, William Jon Gray. It was his last concert with us.

2025 appears to have been the years when deepfake videos became convincing. Ted Gioia sees all kinds of problems coming from that:

A few days ago, having taken a big gulp and reckoned with how this will reduce my book count for 2026, I started Iain McGilquist, The Matter With Things. 📚

With all this talk of books and unread books and mortality, I just spent an hour or two taking every book save one from my Amazon wishlist, migrating maybe half of them to Bookshop.org, and deleting the other half entirely.

The one I left is Angels in the Cellar, oddly absent from Bookshop.org.

The Turing Test is toast. What’s next?