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.

“Piled High”
18 inches of snow piled on the handrail of this bridge in Tahquamenon Falls State Park in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

—Douglas Jones Photography.

Never hire someone who has a tattoo.

There is a vernacular proverb in a land where the English govern much but dwell little—“There are three dangers—the horns of an ox, the heels of a horse, and the tongue of an Englishman.”

In this pamphlet Carlyle implied that the God of the Bible was incredible, and said that ‘a man’s “religion” consists not of the many things he is in doubt of and tries to believe, but of the few he is assured of, and has no need of effort for believing.’ Accordingly the ‘modern man’s religion’ was such as might have been expected of pigs, “if the inestimable talent of Literature should, in these swift days of progress, be extended to the brute creation, so that swine (I mean four-footed swine) could communicate to us on paper what they thought of the Universe.” Whereupon he gave a humorous sketch of Pig Philosophy, such as Swift might have written but no other man of letters on record, full of fun, yet making one feel uncomfortably how much we modern men resemble swine.

—David Alec Wilson, Carlyle at his Zenith