Wow! Great distillation!

AI is an adjunct to the left hemisphere of your brain which can free up a lot of your time to go spend it on the right by loving other people. But we probably will screw it up by pretending that AI is your therapist, friend or lover, all of which are actually right-brain things. If you’re using it to help your right brain, you’re getting it wrong and your brain won’t be fooled. You will not fool yourself. Even if it passes the Turing test in your consciousness, in your subconscious you’ll become more anxious, more lonely, more afraid and more depressed.

Arthur Brooks

Putative Virtue – Tipsy Teetotaler ن

The Nativity Fast in Orthodoxy is over, so here I sit, fasting before a Nativity-related Liturgy this morning but looking forward to City Barbecue for lunch. Baked beans with brisket and collard greens with bacon ought to be about right.

If I’ve got to choose between Brutalism and Trump Rococo, I think I’ll take Brutalism.

Retrospective: This year I learned that Evangelicals aren’t unequivocally Protestant. I mention it because @eastbrad was my tutor.

It could be a pretty fruitful insight. It’s still a mind-bender, but I’m not sure I’ll ever shake it.

Nativity (with a 9-month look-back) – Tipsy Teetotaler ن

Finished Francis Spufford, Golden Hill: A Novel of Old New York.📚

I should read more fiction because I kind of like truly surprising endings.

Did not finish Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History. 📚

It felt as if I’d read and internalized everything he was writing. But it’s not that he was plowing old ground, I think. Virgin soil, actually, the fruits of which plowing I’ve enjoyed my whole life. He’s the original, the protos.

We take the state’s monopoly of violence for granted, but when that monopoly is challenged, people turn to gangsters to keep the peace. Eli Lake, A History of Tough Jews (podcast episode).

I really enjoyed this podcast episode. America’s 70+ year immunity to virulent antisemitism sadly is ending.

Potent: My Resignation From The Heritage Foundation

We Let AI Run Our Office Vending Machine. It Lost Hundreds of Dollars. (gift link).

Umm, I’m definitely not ready to turn over any of my life to Agentic AI.

Much of Trump II’s first year has been spent taking near-absolute control of the Executive Branch while attempting to extend the reach of that branch.

If you want dispassionate analysis of his dealings with the Executive, I highly recommend the Executive Functions Substack. Here’s the 2025 wrap.

Even the Economist has a story on the Indiana Senate’s rejection of trying to gerrymander from 7-2 to 9-0, but I heard someone mention a factor that may be underrated: Indiana’s legislature is part-time. Representatives and Senators have real jobs (and legislative pay isn’t lavish, either).

I guess I’m a pretty simple guy when it comes to the ‘net. I’m here on micro.blog. I have a WordPress blog I approach more and more laconically. I have a blot blog for venting. I never considered Substack, and as I read the travails of a guy trying to leave, I’m very glad of that.

AI can’t tell me why recent scam emails use the figure $699.99, so I’m hereby starting the semi-plausible rumor that it’s because $700 is the threshold for some federal wire fraud statute.

I have no idea whether that’s true or not, but it annoys me to have no explanation.

In a parallel universe:

Killed: Acclaimed Gospel Vocalist Jubilant Sykes - Christianity Today

Stabbed by his son.

Encountered by my wife as the caption on a Pinterest image:

I made a risotto with mushrooms I foraged locally.

Not only was it delicious, but a Welsh choir of purple elephants sang the whole Bat Out of Hell album accompanied by a light show.

The Bondi Beach shooters in Australia, FYI, appear to have been Sajid Akram and his son Naveed Akram. Those names have been strangely absent from every mainstream media account I’ve read so far this morning (granted, I’ve read only a few).

I cannot trust the media not to hide things.

Snowed in – Tipsy Teetotaler ن.

• Pareto improvement: Change benefiting at least one party without harming others.
• Pareto punishment: Change harming at least one party without benefiting others.

The guy who had The Art of the Deal ghost-written for him knows only the second option.

(H/T Kevin D. Williamson)

I am extremely proud of the Indiana Senate right now.

Probably my favorite provocative article title of all time: Most of The Time The Earth Is Flat.

(Spoiler alert: It delivers.)

I’ve never before read an Ezra Klein column that so struck me that I plan to come back to it in a few months. I prefer the title under which it caught my eye to the current posted title: Can We Stop Our Digital Selves From Becoming Who We Are?.

Most of us have read similar arguments, and some of you have internalized it better than I, but since this version of the argument grabbed me, I’m sharing it anyway.

Recommendation: I’ve been listening for a few months to Old School, a book- and male-oriented podcast from the Free Press. Each one-hour release features host Shilo Brooks interviewing a man about a book that changed his life.

Very good stuff. Brooks is a classically educated (St. Johns) prof.

If the weather forecast is accurate, I won’t need to blow snow again until next week.