Really proud of @jensap and I’s old housemate whose album was recently written up in Pitchfork!
Jewel-Box Heroes: Why the CD Revival Is Finally Here HT @ayjay
Giles Fraser on Roger Scruton and true conservatism — makes me wanna read some Scruton
Let’s Not Invent a Civil War
As the End Draws Near – Silence
The UX on this Small Child Is Terrible
why I will always prefer print (but still begrudgingly use a kindle on occasion)
For a while now, I’ve tried to avoid the Bezos machine as much as I can in my consumer habits. I don’t need to enumerate the reasons I loathe Amazon — at this point, I think many people are familiar with them. But, much as I hate to admit it, the Kindle is a remarkable piece of calm technology, which is why I purchased one about six years ago. Of course, they are not the only e-reading option available, which is why sometime last year I purchased a refurbished Kobo.
SnowRuck 🎒🏃♂️❄️ Partial 📷 credit to @jensap
(In the spirit of “people should blog more” posts going around, I feel inspired to try my hand at some informal writing, of “thinking aloud in public”. No resolutions here — I may or may not continue this habit. Okay, enough meta-blogging. On with the show)
I’ve been meaning to reread C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, especially after reading its fictional counterpart, That Hideous Strength, last year, so it seems fortuitous that Richard Beck is writing a blog series about reading it for the first time. After addressing his own misconception that Lewis’s phrase, “men without chests”, has something to do with masculinity (which is an interesting misconception in the first place, one that I feel deserves its own post), he explains that Lewis’s essay has to do with forming emotions that correspond to objective values. “Men without chests” are not necessarily cowardly or timid, they are just devoid of properly formed feelings.
I think Abolition’s vision of a technocratic society that disregards any correlation between affections and real value has, in many respects, come true. It’s eerily prescient. Equally prescient, I think, was Thrice’s song of the same name, released in 2003. Dustin Kensrue screams, “The abolition of man is within the reach of science; but are we so far gone that we’ll try it?” I think the ensuing decades since that song’s release have seen an onslaught of attempts at that very thing.
So happy with our new record cabinet. It’s nice to have all of our audio gear in one spot now. 🎧🎵
Notable Reads 2021
It’s hard for me to believe it, but we’re almost at the end of 2021. At one time, I thought I would write these reading roundups more regularly. Alas, I had other priorities. Here’s a list of favorites, with occasional annotations. Eye of the Needle by Ken Follet Advent by Fleming Rutledge On the Road with Saint Augustine by James K.A. Smith Reckless graphic novels by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips — Some of the page-turning-est crime fiction I’ve ever read, in comic book form!
🌊🎅🏻🧑🏻🎄
Tech and tech-adjacent peeps of Microblog — anyone have any suggested reading on transitioning from an IC to an engineering management role? For context, I currently work as an engineer, not a manager.
I went to Mars Hill. I’ve only listened to a little of the podcast. It’s an experience I have deep ambivalence about. Might write more someday. Since it’s wrapping up, there’ll be much pontification about it. But I think these words from Dave Zahl are spot-on. Ht @jensap
Dinosaur Valley State Park w/ @jensap 🥾🎒🦖
Always a blast to work out with these guys in the gloom. 🇺🇸🏃♂️🏛
satanic banality
Yuval Levin: The shift is evident in what the report, like a great deal of other social science in recent years, describes as a mix of good and bad news about American society. The good news is that some of the most troubling social trends of the second half of the 20th century have been abating in our time. Last year, for instance, the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low.
Three reasons I’m thankful for the library at The Center for Christian Study
The Other Side of Bothsidesism
Christ is the End of the Law
Class 1 / Class 2 Problems
Exodus
To Join the New Thing
I Don’t Want a Metaverse HT @Cheri
Supply Chain Silver Linings
The slab and the permacomputer
Restorative cities
Dead Subjects
Iain McGilchrist on the coincidence of opposites
Stalacpipe Organ, Luray Caverns
The World Wide Web Is Woven Out Of Threads Of Glass
Our Anger Problem Is Making Me Angry
bad dispensations
Words from St. Isaac of Syria
IoT Hacking and Rickrolling My High School District
a brief note on narrative
Adversity: Death by a Thousand Cuts, or Practice for Greatness
All I could think of was Buddy Christ from Dogma’s “Catholicism Now!” when I read this from Giles Fraser:
St Michael’s Church in Bournemouth had renamed itself St Mike’s “in a trendy rebrand to entice young people”. … The Vicar there, Sarah Yetman, has a tough gig and all power to her elbow for trying to turn things around. “We aren’t trying to alienate anyone by changing the name” she explains, “But I do feel that if we don’t take steps now to draw people in from those younger generations we will be lamenting what we have missed in the years to come.”
Jeffrey Bilbro’s piece about staying sane in a mad time crystalizes some thoughts I’ve had for a while.
trainings
In grey city spaces, a greener future is growing
Magic Mushrooms (HT @ReaderJohn)
indices
Build a Bridge
I’ve come to think the reason Gamaliel, Jesus-disbeliever though he apparently was, gets quoted in the book of Acts is that his rationale was commendable. We believers in Jesus, too, have to wait for Judgment Day for God to sort out the wheat from the tares — for God to sift through the ways I and my tribe, “traditionalists” on sexuality, have been more Levite than Samaritan to gay people left for dead along the church’s highway to supposed triumph. We have to wait for God to expose the ways a supposedly enlightened “progressivism” has left believers bereft of any way of understanding Scripture as the Word of God for people today and therefore constantly exposed to whatever wind seems to be promising compassion in the here and now, often heedless of its hidden costs. We have to wait, ultimately, for God to bring us all, traditionalist and progressive alike, to see our shared poverty, our common need for God’s mercy in Christ. In the meantime, and in spite of spirited urges for mutual anathemas, we’re apparently called to “wait for one another” (1 Corinthians 11:33). We’re called to wait as long as it takes to maintain our visible unity, our line of direct descent from those who experienced Jesus’ transforming mercy firsthand.