David Pennington
@dtpennington
I write stuff. I’d like to write more stuff. Currently: reclaiming my brain.
David Pennington
dtpennington.com
Perhaps the immutable error of parenthood is that we give our children what we wanted, whether they want it or not.”
Austin Kleon • Give Yourself What You Needed Then and Give Your Kids What They Need Now
the internet isn’t some alien force that descended upon us.
It’s just us, but bigger.
It’s just us, but bigger.
Joan Westenberg • The Original Sin of Everything
Not because machines are writing, but because we are beginning to write like them. Predictability has become a virtue. Voice is flattened into tone. Style is reduced to format.
Carl Hendrick • Ultra-Processed Minds: The End of Deep Reading and What It Costs Us
He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.
– Jean-Luc Godard
What would happen if you did a Zoom call with the people who follow your work? Or if you planned a small dinner with other creative people in your orbit? Say we use the internet as a tool to make the plans, and then we close the laptop and build with the handful of people in front of us - then what? What could we do that we’re avoiding because
... See more“A lot of writing consists of waiting around for the aquarium to settle so you can see the fish. Walking around muttering seems to hasten the process. Taking public transportation nowhere helps. Looking out the bus window lets the back of your mind move forward. Don’t listen to anything but natural sound. Don’t look at anything you have to turn on.... See more
Austin Kleon • The North Shore
1 The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.
2 It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.
3 It should do work that is clearly and demon-strably better than the one it replaces.
4 It should use less energy than the one it replaces.
5 If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.
6 It
... See moreBut solitude and loneliness are not one and the same. “It is actually a very healthy emotional response to feel some loneliness,” the NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg told me. “That cue is the thing that pushes you off the couch and into face-to-face interaction.” The real problem here, the nature of America’s social crisis, is that most Americans... See more
archive.ph
Persistently for the last twenty years the ideals of order or liberty have dwindled in our books; the ambitions of wit and eloquence have dwindled in our parliaments. Literature has purposely become less political; politics have purposely become less literary. General theories of the relation of things have thus been extruded from both; and we are
... See more