Fragments

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I've been reading artists and poets who experiment with computers in their work, and recently that's meant John Cage. I've been opening his delightfully inventive Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) at random lately. It's a fun book; the composition, color, and even the font of each "diary" entry are based on aleatory operations. I picked up a mint used copy at the delightful Topos books last year, but only just got around to reading it.

I opened to this page after watching the cruelty that unfolded in the White House yesterday, during which our adolescent leaders berated and bullied the leader of Ukraine , a vulnerable country under attack by a rapacious larger power. So much imperative in the belligerent demands for resources, so much obedience and deference demanded without offering so much as a word of respect in return.

          If you're poor, it's illegal. If you're
   rich, you're automatically within the law

And, later

                                 Syntax, like
 government, can only be obeyed. It is
 therefore of no use except when you
    have something particular to command
    such as: Go buy me a bunch of carrots.

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This "Dear Colleague" letter , sent by the Department of Education to institutions of higher education late last week, is exactly what you would do if you were trying to use the logic of liberalism in the service of a narrow authoritarianism.

And as easily as it fell in line with progressive orthodoxy, the academy twists itself in knots to bow to the reaction against it.

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A colleague of mine, the inimitable Max Chis, sent me a link to this study the other day. It measures popular generative AI models against baseline cognitive tests.
TLDR: everyone's favorite new pals are all demented.

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After months of reading it little-by-little each evening, I'm finally finishing the second volume of Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities. In a sentence: it's a book that has a surprising lot to say to our moment. And here, on St. Valentine's Day of all days, a breathless screed on love in its closing pages:

Now, everyone knows what a great relief it is when one is upset to work off one's anger on someone, even if it has nothing to do with him; but it is less well known that this also applies to love. For love, too, must often be worked off in the same way on someone not really involved, for lack of a more suitable outlet.

And then, this song came on the radio, and the sentiments combined into something complicated.

A bit unrelated to his narrator's voicing of a character's thoughts on love, but here's a smart essay on Musil at the New Criterion that I recently read as well.

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