I wonder if these cases are connected.

By Instinct and by Conscience, I loathe the Mechanical Simulacrum, the "Artificial Intelligence" that apes the Divine Spark. And yet... and yet! When I behold this Iron Behemoth crushing the gamers—those idle lotus-eaters who squander God's precious Time in frivolity—I find my Anathema choked in my throat.

If the Machine serves to scourge the gamer, can it be wholly accursed?

I stand paralyzed; I am but an indecisive hesitator.

The Philosopher of this age is not a Socrates, a Plato, a Hooker, or Taylor, who inculcates on men the necessity and infinite worth of moral goodness, the great truth that our happiness depends on the mind which is within us, and not on the circumstances which are without us; but a Smith, a De Lolme, a Bentham, who chiefly inculcates the reverse of this,—that our happiness depends entirely on external circumstances; nay, that the strength and dignity of the mind within us is itself the creature and consequence of these. Were the laws, the government, in good order, all were well with us; the rest would care for itself! Dissentients from this opinion, expressed or implied, are now rarely to be met with; widely and angrily as men differ in its application, the principle is admitted by all.

—Carlyle, Signs of the Times

Cease to brag to me of America, and its model institutions and constitutions. To men in their sleep there is nothing granted in this world: nothing, or as good as nothing, to men that sit idly caucusing and ballot-boxing on the graves of their heroic ancestors, saying, “It is well, it is well!”

Corn and bacon are granted: not a very sublime boon, on such conditions; a boon moreover which, on such conditions, cannot last!–No: America too will have to strain its energies, in quite other fashion than this; to crack its sinews, and all but break its heart, as the rest of us have had to do, in thousand-fold wrestle with the Pythons and mud-demons, before it can become a habitation for the gods.

America’s battle is yet to fight; and we, sorrowful though nothing doubting, will wish her strength for it. New Spiritual Pythons, plenty of them; enormous Megatherions, as ugly as were ever born of mud, loom huge and hideous out of the twilight Future on America; and she will have her own agony, and her own victory, but on other terms than she is yet quite aware of.

— Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets

Verily, though the unfeeling Glass declares a scant thirty-seven degrees, there descends upon the Spirit a phantasmagoric Noon, a sudden Pentecost of the Blood that mocketh the surrounding Rime, as if the Almighty had flung open the Furnace of Creation to grant a fleeting, feverish Absolution unto this, mine frozen World.

Just saw a cyber truck on the road for the first time in a long while. He was going maybe 45-50 in a 55. Had a big line of cars behind him. This is the first time I've ever thought "maybe not all cyber truck owners are bad people."

The camera woman in the first one gives off major Sam Adams vibes.

Lo, across the white, silent Sepulchre of the Drift, there scuttles a dark, hirsute Reality—this grim, eight-legged Lycosa, a misplaced Spark of Vitality wandering with desperate Earnestness through the crystalline Void, as if to hurl a defiant "No!" against the pale, all-devouring Empire of Frost.

All true Intellectual Labour is, at its core, a suffering; a wrestling with the chaotic Inane to wring Order from it. So, too, with reading. If, instead of marching boldly into the Thicket, you lean upon the crutch of Abridgement and Simplification, seeking to grease the wheels of Thought, you have, O unfortunate one, but thickened the walls of your own stupidity, retarded thyself, and shut out the very Light of Heaven from your mind.

Read. Whole. Books. Difficult ones.

Vivek slinked back on to X

This might be fair. Why would Americans be the highest experts on what an American is?

We can think of plenty of examples where this sort of thinking would be wrong. I know what a bird is better than the crows in my yard do. The Soviets and the Nazis, during their battles against America, both understood some things about America and Americans that the average American didn't.

There's really no reason to think Americans have some special knowledge about America or being an American. If anything, they're probably more confused on the matter than average.

If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.

—Thomas Carlyle, recounted in a letter by a friend and then quoted in Carlyle at his Zenith by David Alec Wilson.

Notice the difference between Carlyle's spoken and written English. To dribble onto Paper the raw, unfiltered fluid of Conversation is the method of the dilettante, not of the Thinker. The Talk of the mouth is a thing of instinct, a mere reflex of the stomach and throat. Do not spew this filth onto the Page, which is Sacred. Writing must be forged, hammered, and tempered in the Fire of Forethought. Remember, O Scribbler, that what is written stands fixed; dare not, then, to inscribe a carelessly written sentence into the Great Ledger of Eternity; Thou art called to be a Priest of the Intellect; therefore, cast thy raw sentences into the Furnace, and let the fire of Diligence burn away the dross until only the Gold remains.