Sunday Morning Reading

“Cowardice is stronger than common sense.”

Another Sunday with yet another stab a sharing some Sunday Morning Reading. What caught my eye this week revolved around history, featuring fiddle players, photography, and a bit of Chekov among other topics. Rosin up the bow and enjoy.

Guillaume gryn_dvs kv5v3 Yh _M unsplash. Black-and-white close-up of an older man playing a violin, wearing a light fedora with a dark band and a patterned shirt, focused with an expressive, open-mouthed expression as he draws the bow across the strings.

Kicking things off are two great pieces from Robin Ince. He jump starts the first with a well worn quote from James Baldwin:

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”

I think we’ve all been gaslit a time or two in our lives. Even if you think you haven’t you should give both The Gaslight Years — Part One and To The End — Gaslighting Part Two a read. I think the fact that Baldwin wrote “hates” in the plural tells a tale.

“Agreement is cheap. Challenge is expensive.” So, says JA Westenberg in The Intellectual Circle Jerk And Why We Can’t Stop. Regardless of the hit to the pocketbook, both come with a cost.

We’ve always fought over history, even while we’re making it. Fine to fight over it, because history teaches us you can’t erase it, no matter how hard you try. Kelsey Ables takes a look at The New History Wars.

Speaking of history, Alan Palazon looks into The Forgotten Photographer Who Put A US President In The White House — And Pioneered Photographic Branding.

Harrison Smith tells the story of Violet Hensley. She Set Aside The Fiddle To Raise Children. At 99, She Made Her Opry Debut. Ms. Hensley recently passed away. Rest in peace.

I’m glad to see that Natasha MH keeps pursuing her art and her writing about it. Check out In The Canvas Grotto.

And to close, here’s a piece from 2018 that Neil Steinberg pulled out of his archives to highlight again this week. Glad he did. The title is a famous quote from Anton Chekov. Cowardice Is Stronger Than Common Sense. Maybe history does just rhyme after all.

(Image from Guillaume Gryn DVS on Unsplash)

Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe if you want. It’s free. If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affilate links.

Sunday Morning Reading

A moment to breathe differently

The road to our time at the family lake house is a mile long and a bumpy washboard filled with twists and turns. Arriving after shaking out a filling or two, there’s a leveling out that leads to a sort of peace, even if only for a few days. I’m not sure I leveled out fully this weekend, but the moments to breathe differently sure helped. Even if the weather only cooperated for a few hours.

Thanks to science, apparently the human origin story is being rewritten according to Ross Anderson in The Human-Origin Story Is Being Radically Revised. Probably a good thing given that today’s story tellers keep rewriting recent history. So it begs the question as to who might listen to any new version science rewrites.

Speaking of science, and also how we might define the human story and its origins, Claire L. Evans takes a look at the creation of brains in labs in AI Is Dead. Organoids Are Alive.

Whatever the twists and turns, bumps and bruises of history, science, and the stories that make up different versions of our lives, I happen to agree with Lauren Leek that everything is being flattened to feel all the same. Check out Temperature Zero For Culture: Why Everything Is Starting To Look The Same.

Given the intermittent rain storms, it was a battle to keep most of us away from our phones this weekend. Neil Steinberg suggests maybe adults need to adopt the practice of some schools in Maybe Adults Should Follow Students In Setting Down Our Phones.

Natasha MH takes a look at crippling anxiety is Sunshine After The Rain. Be the sunshine.

Dealing with anxiety can be painful. Lots of that to go around these days. David Todd McCarty examines The Upside Of Pain.

Disunion by Kurt Anderson is a terrific short story. It may be speculative fiction, but it feels all too real. I don’t know why, but reading this does not make me feel anxious or cause me pain.

With things flattening out, I believe the extreme edges are where things always matter. Robin Ince writes How I Became An Extremist.

Using quotes from throughout history, literary and otherwise, Jordan Dworkin built a fascinating webpage that tours through the ordinary things of an apartment, reminding us that the things we take for granted were once new and invented somewhere along the line and that “we remain restless in the midst of progress,” and our lives today are “a gallery of past generations’ heroic efforts to do the same.” Check out Ordinary Abundance. It’s a lovely piece and worth your time. I wish I felt the same about the things we’re trying to create today.

(Photo by the author)

Sunday Morning Reading

Where does it begin? Where does it end?

Origin stories. Crazy stuff sometimes. Living in a world when we can make up, massage, or hallucinate just about anything, it’s no wonder that origin stories captivate and often capture us in our quest for meaning. Perhaps so we can have disagreements over them. I wonder what the origin of that is all about? This week’s Sunday Morning Reading touches on origin stories as well as some of the usual topics that I find of interest and worth sharing.

A typewriter with a page inserted with the sentence "In The Beginning" Getty images c O6QssKbtI unsplash.

Ross Anderson tells us The Human-Origin Story Is Being Radically Revised. Even if we discovered that this is all a simulation, I’m sure it would be debated, monetized, summarized, and bastardized into meaninglessness somehow.

No origin story is complete without some sort of religious or spiritual interpretation. Even Artificial Intelligence isn’t immune to that human phenomenon. Hayden Field explores How AI Bots Started A Religion — Humans Immediately Followed.

Everybody makes mistakes. Neil Steinberg suggests we might be getting too comfortable with that fact and a writer’s duty is to aim higher for accuracy, while admitting our flaws in To Write Is Too Err.

On a political front, everyone seems mired in a mud fight about how the Democrats might be unable to reconcile their progressive and moderate wings. Jay Caspian King takes a look at Subaru Socialists And The Great Disappointed, trying to figure out what’s behind some of the millennial thinking these days, as well as that of the generation that followed them, which he labels “The Great Disappointed.” Life is disappointment. Living is how you deal with it.

Meanwhile, David Todd McCarty asks What Does It Mean To Be A Moderate? I don’t have the answer to that. Frankly, given that everyone is so pissed off I don’t think it matters. That said, while how we insist on defining ourselves might help talk about political life, it sure isn’t helping cure what ails us.

Apparently the one thing that all flavors of the political spectrum can agree on is that data centers are not a good thing. Except those who make the policy and accept the bribes to allow data center construction in my backyard or yours. Molly Taft looks at How Data Centers Broke American Politics. I might argue that they revealed rather than broke. Because the bagmen got too clumsy.

I’ve been following the goings on at Google for most of the summer because the goings on are going to change things. In my view, not for the better. Like Donald Trump, Google hasn’t been shy about saying it’s going to screw things up. (My words, not theirs.) This week there was a shakeup among Google’s AI hierarchy that suggests the screws on the screw up are tightening down in what seems like a rush to productize too soon. Hayden Field gets into The Messy Politics Behind Google’s Big AI Shakeup.

Every origin story is one that also reaches an end. I commented on the passing of Om Malik several Sunday’s ago. Thanks to John Gruber for linking to Om’s final blog post, something I somehow missed. It’s about so much more than the headline suggests. But that’s what Om Malik was about. So much more. Check out The Myth, The Mythos and the Man. I’ll close with this quote from his post:

The sophist is selecting, sequencing, and presenting in ways that produce belief without requiring the audience to do the work. Mythos, for Plato, was the domain of poets and myth-makers. Useful for educating the young, dangerous when deployed as a substitute for rigorous argument among adults.

(Image licensed from Getty Images for Unsplash+)

Sunday Morning Reading

Revelate

Still on the road for summer travels, but this week offered a few moments to do some reading when not toodling along listening to the music of Glen Hansard. So time to share a few good pieces of writing and good reads in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading.

Kick things off with a piece by Robert P. George called The Two Great Threats To Truth. He questions whether there really is a difference between moral relativism and fantacism, if in the end they yield the same result. The piece will make you think. If thinking is your thing.

Claire Stapelton rose through the ranks at Google. From reading The Voice Of Google, it sounds like she saw it all, and she’s telling quite a bit of it.

“Government Efficiency and Death by Indifference” is the subhead to Anton Shekhovtsov’s The Techno-Oligarchy’s First “Holocaust.” It’s quite a dire piece, but certainly worth your time.

Speaking of oligarchs, a trio of NY Times writers take a look at Larry Ellison and his bet on AI. Check out Jonathan Mahler, Jim Rutenberg and Kirsten Grind’s story, Larry Ellision Bet It All on the A.I. Boom. Will He Be The Face of the A.I. Bubble? At some point this bubble has to pop, right?

David Todd McCarthy says There Is A Crack In Everything. Truth and beauty lie in the imperfections, not in the perfect.

The world is certainly an imperfect place. Rachel Yoder’s short story, The Promise perfectly reveals that.

Alex Skopic flushes out some thoughts on the failed state in Diarrhea In Every Pot and A Gun In Every Mailbox. When you break things down to “shooting and shitting” you might be on to something.

There’s nothing obligatory about Jeff Johnson’s piece The Obligatory AI Post. Make it obligatory reading.

To close out this week, a sad one when we lost one of the good ones in Glen Hansard, give a read to Sophia Stewart’s tribute, The People’s Troubador. If you don’t know the music, you should.

Revelate.

(Image from Samuel Couto on Unsplash)

Sunday Morning Reading

Racking up the miles

It’s a travel weekend and we’re on the road. Again. ( I love travel. I hate travel.) So, Sunday Morning Reading is on hiatus this week.

If you’re desperate for something to read check out past Sunday Morning Reading columns or any of this week’s posts on Life On The Wicked Stage Act 3

Sunday Morning Reading

Still milling milestones

It’s a Sunday. It’s a Sunday when I can say I’ve hung around for seven decades as the clock ticked past 70 yesterday. Spending the weekend celebrating with the grandkids, dodging in an out of pockets of time when the air is breathable, so there’s only a few links to share in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading. Hope you enjoy them as much as I have spending it with two innocents watching them approach the world from that perspective. When they look to you for answers, it’s awesomely terrifying.

David Todd McCarty thinks We’re Teaching Our Kinds The Wrong Lessons. As someone who wonders why we spend so much time teaching them not to lie in a world that rewards liars, I often think the same.

NatashaMH writes about An Artist’s Search For Meaning. The quote below she included from Viktor E. Frankel, hit in a different way on this birthday weekend.

“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life — daily and hourly.”

It wouldn’t be a Sunday Morning Reading column without at least one nod to politics, Her’s the nod from Carlyn Beccia, wondering Has America Crossed The Asshole Threshold? I would argue yes, but wouldn’t limit it to just America.

Claire Stapleton worked at Google. She saw most of it. She tells what she saw in The Voice Of Google in a piece that is so much more than just about Google and the tech culture.

Sunday Morning Reading

Reading is a gateway drug. Get your buzz on.

Sunday Morning Reading is about…well, it’s about reading. In my personal opinion some don’t read nearly enough. Read. Read those you agree with. Just as important, read those you disagree with. Stretch those reading muscles and stretch your mind.

I linked to a Rose Horowitch piece earlier in the week entitled The End of Reading Is Here. It’s controversial. I don’t agree completely. But that’s the point of reading. If that’s still a thing.

Follow that piece up with Sonny Bunch’s R.I.P. Attention Span. Closing his essay he says “The end of reading may be here. But so too might be the end of watching anything that lasts longer than the time it took you to read this sentence.”

In an age where some are eager to ban books (surprised we haven’t seen any book burnings yet) Mendel Uminer chose to move rather than reduce his collection of books after his landlord complained. Check out Alex Vadukul’s story Too Many Books.

You know that reading can satisfy curiosity. It can also raise it to new levels. Neil Steinberg’s Etymological Field Notes tells such a tale. Do you flânuer?

And for those who tell you not to believe everything you read, here’s John Semley on The Fanfare Around The Band Geese Actually Was a Psyop.

In the wake of all of the seemingly unending horrible daily doping of bad political news, (some about wakes to be, some about wakes possibly delayed), James L. Bruno writes The “Last Best Hope On Earth” Crashes & Burns.

With the act and art of reading being in question, especially when it comes to the news, the click matters more than the content now that most of what we’re presented isn’t worth being displayed in a supermarket checkout line tabloid rack. Or does it? According to Pete Pachal when it comes to the news Speed Still Matters In News, But The Prize Is No Longer The Click. Maybe there never was a prize.

Speaking of prizes. Winning isn’t everything. Unless it is. JA Westenberg reminds us that A Battle Won Is A Terrible Thing.

Rob Urie tells us Why AI Doesn’t Think, Cannot Reason, Isn’t Intelligent and Will Never Achieve Consciousness. It’s not magic.

(image from the author)

Sunday Morning Reading

Comings and goings as life goes on.

It’s a Sunday, so it’s time for a little Sunday Morning Reading. As usual, I’m sharing a collection of links and once again they somehow touch one upon another. Funny how that happens. Some point to big issues. Some about the comings and goings of life. Some about its shifts. Take a look. Take a read. Happiness is a choice.

a bronze statue depicting a young boy sitting on a stone ledge and reading a book. He sits cross-legged, leaning slightly forward, with a large open book resting on his lap. Perched on the open page of the book is a small, detailed bronze bird looking back toward him. The boy's right arm rests on a stack of four large bronze books piled beside him on the stone ledge.

David Todd McCarty’s On Being Good At Life talks about abandoning the quest of success, fame, fortune, and just being better at life. Deciding how one defines life is always the first obstacle.

If you read one piece among those shared this week, read Josh Marshall’s Google, AI, Oligarchy and the End of the ‘Open Web’. I’ve been writing about Google’s recent moves and how they will change the web as we know it. Josh nails it better than I ever did. Some think we’re ready for this. I’m not one of those.

We lost a one of the good ones this week when Om Malik died. By all accounts a great human being and a giant in tech for so many years in so many spheres. Om’s writing has been featured in this column many times. As a human he was so much more than just his achievements. Two great pieces about Om that you should take the time to read. John Gruber’s simply titled Om, and Mathew Ingram’s Om Malik 1966-2026. Sail on, good sir.

Tom Wellborn takes a look at The Art of the Fail. You can guess his target. You should read his piece.

JA Westenberg takes on the pursuit of optimization and the cult of the extreme in The Extreme Is The Easy Way Out. Choosing a middle path is also not necessarily easy.

Mike Masnick tells us How The Internet Became A Tool For Domination and Control Instead of Liberation. Joke’s on us. I’m not laughing.

Ken White’s not laughing either. Or maybe he is. There’s always some kind of fracas happening in social media, regardless of the platform. When you step back, it’s weird that we designed something to explode and exploit that kind of chaos. Weirder still that we think we can control what people say or social media or anywhere else by banning them. Ken White of PopeHat fame was recently suspended from Bluesky and writes about his thoughts in A Bit of Tedious Drama At Bluesky. The piece is much more than just about those circumstances and worth your time. You are what you think and say. Ken defines it well.

A tip of the hat to Dwight Silverman who’s retiring (again) after a terrfic career writing about tech. I have always enjoyed Dwight’s work because he kept the focus of his tech adventures on the user, while having a firm grasp of the bigger picture. Check out The Grand Finale (for real this time): My 30+ year column ends, It’s exit heralded by AI, and also his thoughts about his retiring on his personal blog. I’m guessing (and hoping) we haven’t seen the last of what Dwight has to say.

Sunday Morning Reading

Taking a breath

It’s been a crazy whirlwind of emotions lately. A death in the family. Keeping up with the grandkids. Celebrating my wife’s latest theatre gig. With that, Sunday Morning Reading is on hiatus this week.

Enjoy your Sunday, while I enjoy time with the grandkids. (If they don’t wear me out!)

Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe if you want. It’s free. If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affilate links.

Sunday Morning Reading

Searching for normal in abnormal places

Time for a little Sunday Morning Reading. Sharing good writing is a normal thing to do. Maybe that’s abnormal. Don’t know. Don’t care. Defining normal is a tricky subjective thing. But then trying to define most things these days feels, well…almsot abnormal.

Just be normal. Is that a “new normal” or last week’s “old normal?” Do we crave normality? Does it matter? Normally, I’d have more to say, but instead check out JA Westenberg’s Just Be Normal About Things.

Mathew Ingram takes on the subject of consciousness, one of the latest discussions bopping around the bits and bytes surrounding AI, with his piece, Is Atlantic Writer Ted Chiang Conscious? How Do We Know? If you ask me, that fact that this is being discussed calls whatever the idea of consciousness is into question. Doesn’t feel normal. For that matter doesn’t feel abnormal either. Just weird.

Mike Masnick states the obvious in CEOs Who Think AI Replaces Their Employees Are Just Bad CEOs.

David Todd McCarty calls his piece The Slow News Moment. I like his description better. “How we became terrorized by the 24-hour news cycle and what we might do to combat the charade of exigency.” Perhaps less is more normal.

“We are being robbed by the worst people in the world,” says Kelly Hayes in The Heist State. Spot on, given that blatant thievery is the new normal these days.

Everywhere you look life is a scam. That is indeed far too normal. Neil Steinberg takes on one that targeted him and other writers in We Love Your Book! Now Give Us Money. Funny stuff.

Protect The Weird, Slow and Inefficient. Natasha MH thinks AI might one day become as invisible a tool to the process of writing as the typewriter did in its day. But look again. The tools don’t matter as much as the desire.

(Image from Justin Simmonds on Unsplash.)