Listening to the first episode of the Newkirks’ series on mediumship. Turns out there is an active Spiritualist camp in Indiana with a very colorful history. I know the destination of my next road trip!

Quoting myself from two years ago:

Two ecosystem services provided by humans: gratitude and awareness.

Good article on the fake personality of chatbots—in part because of lack of persistence through time. (Via @ayjay) As I’ve been using Claude more, I’m finding that it’s best at amplifying my own ideas and spinning them in new directions, not generating anything new or even factual.

Good episode of The Emerald podcast: “Reimagining our Ancestors.

Adam Kotsko on how the post-literate AI world will kill God

We’ll see how committed to the truth the Democrats are when Bill Clinton gets implicated in the Epstein affair.

Really good essay from @jaheppler on 19th century Americans bringing bison near to extinction.

John Michael Greer is never boring. In this interview, the (eventual) focus is on Trump and American politics. It’s good to hear a political commentator that takes seriously the idea of time as a cycle rather than a straight line. That idea opens up new possibilities, and maybe tames some anxieties.

The prime directive of localism as a political and religious commitment is the tending and feeding of one’s own home and the life in which it is situated.

The free version of The Morning Dispatch gives me about all of the news I want in a day. I hardly ever click the links because I’d hit a paywall anyway. But their summaries make me aware of what’s going on, and I can follow up if something piques my interest.