Anecdotes
St. Anthony the Great once wondered if there was anyone who had done greater works towards salvation than himself. God led him to a cobbler in the nearby city. Anthony observed him and, at last, asked him to describe his rule of life.
“Elder, I don’t know if I have ever done anything good. Every morning after waking up, I pray and then I start work.
... See moreIn March 2019, heavy rains in California led to a brilliant carpet of orange poppies in Walker Canyon, part of a 500,000-acre habitat reserve in the Temescal Mountains southeast of Los Angeles. Run by a state conservation agency, the reserve was mainly a local attraction until a twenty-four-year-old Instagram and YouTube influencer with tens of
... See moreThe method of loci is an early recorded instance of such protocolization. Its origins trace back to Hellenic lyric poet Simonides around 500 B.C.E. The tale begins with Simonides reciting an epic poem at a banquet, and upon stepping outside shortly thereafter, the banquet hall collapsed, leaving the crushed guests unrecognizable. Simonides was able
... See more[Braille Anecdote]
[blindness][braille][awl]
Louis Braille had been accidentally blinded at the tender age of three years old in his father’s workshop, with an awl. Cohn remarks on this, drawing a breathtaking association: “Is it an accident that my tool for making hand-punched braille is so much like an awl?
Touching Words: on Poetry in Memoir TJ... See more
[blindness][braille][awl]
Louis Braille had been accidentally blinded at the tender age of three years old in his father’s workshop, with an awl. Cohn remarks on this, drawing a breathtaking association: “Is it an accident that my tool for making hand-punched braille is so much like an awl?
Touching Words: on Poetry in Memoir TJ... See more
Sublime Zettels March 2025
You’re in Paris on the evening of December 28, 1895. It’s cold and windy, and this lull in the year, between Christmas and New Year’s, feels restless and full of possibilities. You are in the Boulevard des Capucines, a few blocks from the shore of the Seine and the Jardin des Tuileries. You stop in front of the Grand Café, a fashionable meeting
... See moreFlash back to my nineteen-year-old self and the bicentennial summer of 1976. It was in that year of patriotic celebrations that the northern Mississippi town of Houston hosted a blues concert featuring Bukka White, a native son of the area. As it happened, my family was then living there, a long way from where I grew up in the Piney Woods south of... See more
Zettels July 2025
the economic incentive is still that you're allowed to externalize the cost. If anyone else externalizes some of their costs and you don't, they beat you economically. Because there's no law forcing you to actually pay the real cost of the thing. We had, we have a really brilliant earth scientist on the team and he is the one that put
... See moreexternalization of costs on the public
[Rain Dance Anecdote]
so I know it's existential but there's some ego part of me that just goes nah you can't have that you know what I mean so I um what if it's co-create what if it's co-created oh no I'm I'm not you can't rationalize it I've got an irrational kind of um irrational response to it but I pushed through that I push through that I
... See moreof course AI applied to supply chains where the economic incentive is still that you're allowed to externalize the cost. If anyone else externalizes some of their costs and you don't, they beat you economically. Because there's no law forcing you to actually pay the real cost of the thing. We had, we have a really brilliant earth scientist on the... See more
Sublime June 2025 Zettels
externalities pfas