Saturday, January 10, 2026

In Case You Want To Begin The Year With Pleasant Frissons Of Schadenfreude

Lowbrow fiction is good sex and highbrow fiction is bad sex.




In Case You Want To Begin The Year With Pleasant Frissons Of Schadenfreude

Here are the most scathing book reviews of last year. Ouch. - LitHub

If You’re Planning To Write A Novel This Year, Elizabeth McCracken Has Some Advice For You

“Ambition is everything. Fiction isn’t ballet. It’s not marathoning. You don’t have to start small, with drills or exercises; there’s nothing you need to perfect before moving on. Your budget for characters and sets and props and visual effects is infinite.” - The Guardian (UK)

Forget Cloud Dancer

On the hook of truth only small carp will bite; on the net of falsehood big salmon is caught.

~ Slavic Saying


Researchers pinpoint bacteria that may trigger MS


Even healthy brains decline with age. Here's what you can do


 Guillermo del Toro emotionally announced the passing of his brother while being honored at the Palm Springs Film Awards on Saturday.

The director, on hand to receive the Visionary Award at the annual star-studded event, was joined on stage by his Frankenstein stars Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi and Mia Goth, as he spoke about how, at 61 years old, “I’ve come to believe that everybody’s born with one or two songs to sing. That’s it, and we keep repeating them and repeating them until we get them sort of right. And Frankenstein was the song I was born to sing


How did Enlightenment philosophers, at the end of their lives, reconcile their ties to the future with the immediacy of death?

 At the end of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” (ca. 1600), the titular prince delivers these dying words: “The rest is silence.” .. 

The Rest Is Silence’: Enlightened Final Thoughts


We Asked Designers Which Paint Colors They Use Again and Again—7 They Can't Stop Using


Among the Prophets Science fiction and the art of prediction

Science fiction and prophecy. "Something like comfort is achieved when the absurdity of the real begins to look like the far-fetched What If of the imaginary"


Epstein will turn eighty-nine on Friday, January 9. His recent essay in The Free Press is titled “I Want to Die with a Book in my Hands.” I’m seventy-three and share the sentiment. Epstein has often noted his fondness for aphoristic writing, prose that is pithy, dense with thought, often equipped with a barb. Here he is on reading at an advanced age after a lifetime of reading:

 

“My sense is that one reads differently in old age than when younger. For one thing, some writers who once seemed vital, central, indispensable, no longer seem so. For another, with one’s time before departing the planet limited, one tends to have less patience. Then, too, after a lifetime of living, one’s experience has widened; and with any luck it has also deepened, and so one has a different perspective on the things one reads or has read, often holding them to a higher standard.”

You Are Never Out of Business'



“We spend our lives trying to discover how to live, a perfect way of life, sens de la vie. But we shall never find it.

 Life is the search for it; the successful life is that which is given up to this search; & when we think we have found it, we are farthest from it. Delude ourselves that we have found it, persuade ourselves that here at least there is a point at which we can rest – and life has become at once moribund. Just as to remain in love we must be continually falling in love, so to remain living we must be continually striving to live.”

To Find Joy in the Everyday, in Life Itself'


Forget Cloud Dancer – 2026 is the year of the rainbow bathroom Brighten your life with a bold-coloured basin


Friday, January 09, 2026

LitHub’s 50 Biggest Literary Stories Of 2025

He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles.

~ Harry Emerson Fosdick


 In 2023, Paul Scheer spent a few days talking to fathers who accompanied their daughters to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in LA, either as concert-goers or just chauffeurs. I love this video. One of the dads summed up the vibe of being there for your loved ones, even if it’s maybe not entirely your thing:

Life is moments. Life has nothing to do with money, nothing to do with things. Life is dancing, that is life! It’s when you feel happy. Their happiness is my happiness.

Elizabeth Spiers wrote about the Swiftie Dads on Bluesky:

This is a model for what actual masculinity should be. Men don’t need to spend more time in caves beating their chests with other men; they need to take their daughters to a meaningful thing and talk to them about it.

These guys taking their daughters to Taylor Swift concerts — and unabashedly enjoying it! — are the model. They are being themselves and not treating their daughters’ interests as stupid or aberrant or a thing they should be patted on the back for participating in.

See also The Joy of Fortnite

Core Memories With the Swiftie Dads


Longwood Town destroyed, three missing in horror Victoria bushfires


There’s barely a blade of grass’: A family-owned winery gone within an hour


Renee Nicole Good, murdered by ICE, was a prize-winning poet. Here’s that poem.


VENI, VIDI, VENEZUELA: Pox Americana from War-a-Iago Dennis Kuchinich 


Reddit overtakes TikTok in UK thanks to search algorithms and gen Z The Guardian. “A recent deal with Google that allows the company to train its AI model on Reddit’s content also appears to have provided a boost. Reddit is the most-cited source for Google AI overviews…”


LitHub’s 50 Biggest Literary Stories Of 2025

A book prize was "paused" when half the nominees dropped out because they objected to another nominee, Reading Rainbow came back, Salman Rushdie’s attacker was convicted of attempted murder, AI ruined the em-dash, and plenty more. - Literary Hub

Like “The Vandals In Rome”: Senators Investigate How MAGA Allies Are “Looting” Kennedy Center

Led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Democrats on the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee say they’ve obtained documents suggesting that the Center is being operated as a “slush fund and private club for Trump’s friends and political allies”, resulting in millions of lost income and a departure from its statutory mission. 

  1. 20th Century Theories of Scientific Explanation by James Woodward and Lauren Ross.

Revised:

  1. Korean Buddhism by Lucy Hyekyung Jee.
  2. Mathematical Style by Paolo Mancosu.

IEP

  1. Being in Structural-Systematic Philosophy by Alan White.

1000-Word Philosophy

BJPS Short Reads

Recently Published Open Access Philosophy Books

Book Reviews

  1. Early German Positivism by Frederick C. Beiser is reviewed by Mark Textor at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
  2. Conceptualising Concepts in Greek Philosophy by Gábor Betegh and Voula Tsouna (eds.) is reviewed by Christoph Helmig at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
  3. Psychoanalysis and Ethics: The Necessity of Perspective by David M. Black is reviewed by Maria Balaska at Philosophical Psychology.
  4. Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler is reviewed by Lorna Finlayson at Boston Review.
  5. The Complete Notebooks by Albert Camus translated by Ryan Bloom is reviewed by Joanna Kavenna at Literary Review.
  6. A Theory of Subjective Wellbeing by Mark Fabian is reviewed by Jessica Sutherland at Philosophical Psychology.
  7. The Developmental Psychology of Personal Identity: A Philosophical Perspective by Massimo Marraffa and Cristina Meini (eds.) is reviewed by Mahmud Nasrul Habibi, Monicha Ana Billa, Ida Umaria Hentihu, Arvan Setiawan & Kristina Serenem at  Philosophical Psychology.
  8. Open Minded: Searching for Truth about the Unconscious Mind by Ben R. Newell & David R. Shanks is reviewed by Aliya Rumana at Philosophical Psychology.
  9. It’s Only Human: The Evolution of Distinctively Human Cognition by Armin W. Schulz is reviewed by Olivier Morin at The British Society for Philosophy of Science.
  10. The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology by Manuel Vargas and John Doris (eds.) is reviewed by Anneli Jefferson at Philosophical Psychology
  11. Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy’s Greatest Pessimist by David Bather Woods is reviewed by Terry Eagleton at London Review of Books.

Philosophy Podcasts – Recent Episodes(via Jason Chen)

Compiled by Michael Glawson

BONUS: Further moves in the simulation argument game

  1. “There will be no Q&A sessions. There will be no dead air. We shall not hear the tick-tock of the clock. How will OpenAI learn from us? I feel a flash of small panic, like a trapped squirrel” — philosopher Daniel Story describes what it was like being at an OpenAI higher education summit
  2. “The whole point is to keep the interesting parts of our thought, about what must be true and what people believe, inside logic, instead of banishing them” — the first of (currently) four posts on reading through Ruth Barcan Marcus’s “Modalities”, from Richard Marshall
  3. “Isn’t it sometimes good to be bored?” — No, says Lorraine Besser
  4. Philosophical commentary on the interesting new show “Pluribus” — from Bill Vanderburgh. The link is to the first in a series of posts, though you shouldn’t read the first before watching the first episode
  5. “Poetry can encourage ambiguity and, unlike philosophy, can focus on emotional and non-rational connections between ideas” — Bradford Skow has released a book of poems about the American Revolution
  6. Liberalism and socialism “share more than they realize—not least their shared tendency to overestimate their distance from one another” — Jan Kandiyali & Martin O’Neill on Rawls and Marx
  7. “Education’s auto-cannibalism: universities consuming their own purpose while cheerfully marketing the tools of their undoing” — facepalm after facepalm in this rant by Ronald Purser about how universities are killing themselves with AI

  1. “There will be no Q&A sessions. There will be no dead air. We shall not hear the tick-tock of the clock. How will OpenAI learn from us? I feel a flash of small panic, like a trapped squirrel” — philosopher Daniel Story describes what it was like being at an OpenAI higher education summit
  2. “The whole point is to keep the interesting parts of our thought, about what must be true and what people believe, inside logic, instead of banishing them” — the first of (currently) four posts on reading through Ruth Barcan Marcus’s “Modalities”, from Richard Marshall
  3. “Isn’t it sometimes good to be bored?” — No, says Lorraine Besser
  4. Philosophical commentary on the interesting new show “Pluribus” — from Bill Vanderburgh. The link is to the first in a series of posts, though you shouldn’t read the first before watching the first episode
  5. “Poetry can encourage ambiguity and, unlike philosophy, can focus on emotional and non-rational connections between ideas” — Bradford Skow has released a book of poems about the American Revolution
  6. Liberalism and socialism “share more than they realize—not least their shared tendency to overestimate their distance from one another” — Jan Kandiyali & Martin O’Neill on Rawls and Marx
  7. “Education’s auto-cannibalism: universities consuming their own purpose while cheerfully marketing the tools of their undoing” — facepalm after facepalm in this rant by Ronald Purser about how universities are killing themselves with AI

Even the Wall Street Journal Doubts the Trump Seize-Venezuela-Oil Scheme

There is no such thing as a non-dangerous dictator! Like all the venomous snakes, all dictators are dangerous! Then what is the antidote? Antidote is our love for freedom and our unshakable determination on the matter of keeping this love!

~ Mehmet Murat ildan 


Inside ICE’s Tool to Monitor Phones in Entire Neighborhoods

Joseph Cox

Media has obtained material that explains how Tangles and Webloc, two surveillance systems ICE recently purchased, work. Webloc can track phones without a warrant and follow their owners home or to their employer.


The LinkedIn job scam is global. The hook is localRest of World


Did Elon Musk Just Confirm He Is Funding The GOP For Midterms? ‘America Is Toast If The…’Yahoo Finance


US-based multinational companies will be exempt from global tax deal Associated Press (Paul R). I had called this early based on some Trump remarks, but only in comments.



Even the Wall Street Journal Doubts the Trump Seize-Venezuela-Oil Scheme

Despite Trump’s loud proclamations, his fevered Venezuela oil heist dreams are set to go nowhere. So what happens then?


You’re not crazy

As the Christmas break ends and reality intrudes, many people feel deeply uncomfortable with the world around them. The news feels alien. Politics feels broken. The economy feels cruel and irrational.

In this video, I explain why that discomfort is not a personal failing; it is a rational response to a world driven by neoliberalmadness, authoritarian politics, and moral collapse.

If you think Trump is mad, Farage is dangerous, Labour has failed, financial capitalism is destructive, and empathy still matters — you're not alone.

Feeling out of step today often means you're seeing more clearly than those who've learned to accept the unacceptable. Change has always come from people prepared to be called “unreasonable”.

Thursday, January 08, 2026

Mere Civility on X

Sometimes the "wrong" train can take us to the right place.

— Paulo Coelho


Epstein, health care and a shutdown fight: Here’s what the House faces in January The Hill


The Australian government is spending millions supporting Elon Musk’s deepfake porn factory, X

A spokesperson for the prime minister says the government is committed to protecting Australians from online harms. Tell that to the Australian victims of X-produced image-based abuse.



NYC Wegmans is storing biometric data on shoppers’ eyes, voices and faces

Gothamist: “Wegmans in New York City has begun collecting biometric data from anyone who enters its supermarkets, according to new signage posted at the chain’s Manhattan and Brooklyn locations earlier this month. Anyone entering the store could have data on their face, eyes and voices collected and stored by the Rochester-headquartered supermarket chain. 

The information is used to “protect the safety and security of our patrons and employees,” according to the signage. The new scanning policy is an expansion of a 2024 pilot. The chain had initially said that the scanning system was only for a small group of employees and promised to delete any biometric data it collected from shoppers during the pilot rollout. The new notice makes no such assurances. Wegmans representatives did not reply to questions about how the data would be stored, why it changed its policy or if it would share the data with law enforcement…”

Gothamist: “Wegmans in New York City has begun collecting biometric data from anyone who enters its supermarkets, according to new signage posted at the chain’s Manhattan and Brooklyn locations earlier this month. Anyone entering the store could have data on their face, eyes and voices collected and stored by the Rochester-headquartered supermarket chain. 

The information is used to “protect the safety and security of our patrons and employees,” according to the signage. The new scanning policy is an expansion of a 2024 pilot. The chain had initially said that the scanning system was only for a small group of employees and promised to delete any biometric data it collected from shoppers during the pilot rollout. 

The new notice makes no such assurances. Wegmans representatives did not reply to questions about how the data would be stored, why it changed its policy or if it would share the data with law enforcement…”

  1. In defense of “mere civility” as a governing strategy for campus conflict — because, says Marie Newhouse, “No set of shared values specific enough to be action-guiding will be endorsed by all students, faculty, and staff, no matter how carefully those values are selected”
  2. Would an AI have moral status if it were conscious? Only if it was also sentient. — so agnosticism about AI consciousness shouldn’t get in the way of developing AI, argues Tom McClelland; just make sure it’s not sentient
  3. “‘I think, therefore I am’ isn’t the best translation of Descartes’s famous pronouncement ‘cogito, ergo sum’” — Galen Strawson on misunderstanding Descartes
  4. “A night at the Museum of Philosophy” — a World Philosophy Day event at Université Laval might be a preview of a more permanent institution in Quebec
  5. We still don’t know why ice is slippery, people — there are some theories, but no consensus
  6. “Elite distortion dramatically affects what those in political power are likely to know, what they care about, what problems they will be attentive to…” — with the random selection of legislators, says Alex Guerrero, those in power “would be a genuine microcosm of the broader community”
  7. “Chuck Norris knows how many grains of sand make a heap” — philosophy-themed Chuck Norris jokes from Avram Hiller

  1. In defense of “mere civility” as a governing strategy for campus conflict — because, says Marie Newhouse, “No set of shared values specific enough to be action-guiding will be endorsed by all students, faculty, and staff, no matter how carefully those values are selected”
  2. Would an AI have moral status if it were conscious? Only if it was also sentient. — so agnosticism about AI consciousness shouldn’t get in the way of developing AI, argues Tom McClelland; just make sure it’s not sentient
  3. “‘I think, therefore I am’ isn’t the best translation of Descartes’s famous pronouncement ‘cogito, ergo sum’” — Galen Strawson on misunderstanding Descartes
  4. “A night at the Museum of Philosophy” — a World Philosophy Day event at Université Laval might be a preview of a more permanent institution in Quebec
  5. We still don’t know why ice is slippery, people — there are some theories, but no consensus
  6. “Elite distortion dramatically affects what those in political power are likely to know, what they care about, what problems they will be attentive to…” — with the random selection of legislators, says Alex Guerrero, those in power “would be a genuine microcosm of the broader community”
  7. “Chuck Norris knows how many grains of sand make a heap” — philosophy-themed Chuck Norris jokes from Avram Hiller

  1. 20th Century Theories of Scientific Explanation by James Woodward and Lauren Ross.

Revised:

  1. Korean Buddhism by Lucy Hyekyung Jee.
  2. Mathematical Style by Paolo Mancosu.

IEP

  1. Being in Structural-Systematic Philosophy by Alan White.

1000-Word Philosophy

BJPS Short Reads

Recently Published Open Access Philosophy Books

Book Reviews

  1. Early German Positivism by Frederick C. Beiser is reviewed by Mark Textor at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
  2. Conceptualising Concepts in Greek Philosophy by Gábor Betegh and Voula Tsouna (eds.) is reviewed by Christoph Helmig at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
  3. Psychoanalysis and Ethics: The Necessity of Perspective by David M. Black is reviewed by Maria Balaska at Philosophical Psychology.
  4. Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler is reviewed by Lorna Finlayson at Boston Review.
  5. The Complete Notebooks by Albert Camus translated by Ryan Bloom is reviewed by Joanna Kavenna at Literary Review.
  6. A Theory of Subjective Wellbeing by Mark Fabian is reviewed by Jessica Sutherland at Philosophical Psychology.
  7. The Developmental Psychology of Personal Identity: A Philosophical Perspective by Massimo Marraffa and Cristina Meini (eds.) is reviewed by Mahmud Nasrul Habibi, Monicha Ana Billa, Ida Umaria Hentihu, Arvan Setiawan & Kristina Serenem at  Philosophical Psychology.
  8. Open Minded: Searching for Truth about the Unconscious Mind by Ben R. Newell & David R. Shanks is reviewed by Aliya Rumana at Philosophical Psychology.
  9. It’s Only Human: The Evolution of Distinctively Human Cognition by Armin W. Schulz is reviewed by Olivier Morin at The British Society for Philosophy of Science.
  10. The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology by Manuel Vargas and John Doris (eds.) is reviewed by Anneli Jefferson at Philosophical Psychology
  11. Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy’s Greatest Pessimist by David Bather Woods is reviewed by Terry Eagleton at London Review of Books.

Philosophy Podcasts – Recent Episodes(via Jason Chen)

Compiled by Michael Glawson

BONUS: Further moves in the simulation argument game