I realized this morning I’m still 47. I’ve been thinking I’m 48 for…I don’t know…months now?

For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Matthew 16:26)

There is nothing more urgent than the preservation of your own soul—not from the fires of hell but from destructive forces here and now. There are powers at large today seeking to rip love from your heart and replace it with fear and hate. In the name of all that is beautiful and holy, you must not allow it.

The powers of destruction are using your politics to get to you. They don’t care about your opinions; your opinions are tools the powers will use to corrupt you. Do you feel that will to dominate, defeat, demean that other, with whom you disagree? The degree to which you feel that is the degree to which the agents of destruction have gained power over your soul. You should be alarmed.

How you play is what you win. (Ursula Le Guin)

If you win through violence, what you have won is violence. What is won by violence must be kept through violence. However noble your intentions, the territory you win through violence will be ruined, dead, sown with salt.

This is a plea for you to resist, not politicians (the poor fools), but the demons running freely through a population, jerking people around like marionettes.

What if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis? (Bayo Akomolafe)

You’re playing a game rigged by the powers of destruction; you can’t win. They have captured your mind and they’re dosing it with fear and anger. The angrier you get, the more you play the domination game, the more you buy into the myth of separation—the more lost you are.

Listen to that still, small voice that you can only detect when you’ve quieted yourself. That voice will call you to nobler, humbler action. That is the voice the powers of destruction need you to ignore. You will feel the echoes of that voice when you look into that formerly hated other’s eyes with compassion. How they react when you attempt that connection is not your business. The only soul you can save is your own.

“Omnipresent AI cameras will ensure good behavior, says Larry Ellison.” General Ludd, we need you now more than ever.

It feels sometimes that critics of euthanasia laws–see the closing paragraphs here–expect everyone to die like Christ on the cross. Why should we force people to endure a death that can only be endured gracefully by saints and martyrs, but which is slow torture to regular mortals?

I’ve been enjoying the Axe and Anvil blacksmithing YouTube channel, though he doesn’t seem to be active there anymore. I found out about him because he’s teaching an upcoming Mortise and Tenon course.

“What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Apparently, give too much attention to one of the people least deserving of such attention.

Does anyone else feel like they–along with most Americans–are subject to some strange bewitchment? Is it some kind of New Thought glamor magic that compels so many of us to obsess over him? Is it some kind of magnetism generated by an uninhibited narcissism?

What if we just didn’t? What if we just stopped clicking on news stories about him and trust that if something is important enough, it will find its way to our attention? What if we just nope out of voluntarily surrendering to a man so deeply desirous of having all eyes on him?

Brian Merchant, Blood in the Machine:

In 1589, William Lee of Calverton developed one of history’s most quietly revolutionary technologies. The legend goes that Lee was upset that his wife spent more time knitting than with him, so he devised the stocking frame to speed up the process. Lee’s machine, about the size of a large desk, allowed its operator to use pedals and bars to automatically mimic the movements of a hand knitter, making it much easier, and faster, to produce stock-ings, socks, tights, and other knit garments. (At the time, men wore tights, not pants.)

The machine worked so well that he tried to commercialize it. But Queen Elizabeth refused to grant Lee a patent, and left him with a foreboding rebuttal: “You aim high, Master Lee,” she said, before expressing concern for the hand knitters his device would affect. “Consider… what the invention could do to my poor subjects. It would assuredly bring to them ruin by depriving them of employment, thus making them beggars.” Lee died broke, oblivious that he’d sowed some of the earliest seeds of the Industrial Revolution. His brother James Lee pressed on with his invention, however, and it later became a key tool in England’s booming textile industry.

At our point in the timeline it’s virtually inconceivable that someone in authority would stop some new automation because of the harm it would do workers. We all look on helplessly because we know our tech overlords are unleashing destructive forces and we know no one in power will stop them because the economy must grow at all costs.

Video about the meaning of Gandalf’s speech to the Balrog. “Servant of the secret fire.” I’m putting that on my business card.

Austin Kleon mentioned The Book of Building Fires in a recent newsletter and, of course, I’m interested. Good book so far. I finally got my order of dried guajillo peppers, which means it’s time to make beans again.

Spring Mill (and Rachel!) in the snow.