Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
I’ll be back!
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
Looking at what the next few weeks hold for me 😬 I realize that I need to take a break from micro.blog for a while. I’ll still be writing at the big blog, though perhaps less frequently than usual. Ciao for now!
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
I just keep coming back to this one. 🎵
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
People love Big Stories, sweeping narratives that seek to describe the whole world or the last thousand years, but Big Stories always obscure two essential truths: (a) that local conditions are endlessly variable, and (b) that you and I are constrained by and accountable to our local conditions.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
Rachmaninoff in Sydney — a report from one of my students.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
I wrote up My Correct Views on Theological Diversity – the title being a nod-and-wink in the direction of Leszek Kołakowski.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
You probably have not heard of Mildred Pope, but I bet you’ll be glad to learn about her.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
When I’m writing my back would very much prefer that I do it while reclining in a comfy chair, but this photo shows why that wouldn’t really work.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
Feels good to cross the 10K barrier. (Working on my Sayers bio.)
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
Via Damon Krukowski, a reminder that even a basic calendar of events could be a work of art if you wanted it to be.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
@eastbrad Possibly of interest: blog.ayjay.org/operating...
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
Here’s a new post for my BMAC supporters.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
If you slip the cover art out of the plastic box that holds the Criterion edition of Perfect Days and look on the back side, you see this:
Full-size image here. (I ran that through the scanner but the folds are still somewhat visible. I apologize.)
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
China depicted by a 17th-century English artist – at the V&A.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
Breaking news: VAR in the Premier League continues to be worse than useless. ⚽️
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
I wrote about Adam Roberts’s novel Space Satan!!! — that’s the title Adam’s son prefers and I can’t disagree.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
I find that I’m not at all ready for the return of (European) footy, not after the Euros and the Olympics. I’d like another month or so to build up some excitement. ⚽️
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
I wrote about Sherlock Holmes and Jacques Derrida. As one does.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
My all-time favorite edition of Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files is this one, about an unfortunate encounter with Charlie Watts.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
Had dinner at Red Herring tonight and the cacio e pepe was, if not to die for, certainly to kill for. Okay, maybe also to die for.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
@toddgrotenhuis It's worth resurrecting!
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
@eastbrad Naturellement, I think this is wrong! Re: wizards, they chose hiddenness because they were being persecuted, and persecuted by whom? Well, in our world's England -- and we're told that Harry Potter takes place in our world -- the persecution of witches went hand in hand with the persecution of Catholics. (Spells and the Mass were both magical rites, demonically inspired.) The old wizard families like the Blacks and Malfoys are therefore analogous to the old Catholic families of England who held to the old faith in secrecy. Re: the Jedi, they are analogous not to anything medieval but rather to Cato and the other Republicans who deplored the rise of the Caesars and tried for as long as they could to keep the flame of Republicanism alive. Both wizards and Jedi are adherents of ancient and widely discredited ways; each group sees itself as a kind of saving remnant.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
@patrickrhone I agree with all that.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
@eastbrad Don’t forget the key difference, which is that wizards have a sense of humor. 😉
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
@JohnPhilpin I'm determined to figure it out!
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
@bjhess This is all impressive! -- but I'm not looking for a new blogging platform right now. I need to sort out all my domain issues and then I can think about other things.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
@SimonWoods I expect to be here! But as I said in an earlier post, I also don't want to lose the 15 years of tags I have at blog.ayjay.org, which connect ideas to one another in ways I (and at least some readers) find useful. I'm confident that Manton wants to help if he can, which at least is an improvement over my other hosting provider -- they can't wait to be rid of me.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
@ayjay So many people have moved to social-media platforms in the past decade that the only people still on the open web are people who know more than I do, and I am struggling with the techies' usual lack of patience with anyone who knows less than they do. I am really concerned that I will lose ayjay.org and blog.ayjay.org.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
@teedan Burnham was not the sort to apologize or retract, but it would be interesting to know whether he'd have written the book at all if he had started it in 1944 instead of 1940.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
@teedan He saw it in Nazi Germany, and believed that it was so efficient that it would spread throughout the world. After all, he argued, its efficacy would be proved by Germany winning WW2.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
@ablerism Gotta love a church in north Texas that looks like it ought to be in north Italy.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
@jaheppler Thanks!
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
@toddgrotenhuis I do like the idea of having one site to manage.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
@manton Thanks for weighing in, Manton! Unfortunately I have too many tags. I'm thinking about perhaps consolidating them pre-import? And re: the theme, it's by Anders Noren, a WordPress developer, but it is open-source: andersnoren.se/teman/hof...
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
@reclaimhosting The email I got from y'all said that my site would not be down during this upgrade but my site (ayjay.org) is down but I bet y'all know that already but I am saying so here just in case. EOM.
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
Alan Jacobs
@ayjay
@teedan @ablerism It's an interesting question that I need to think about further. I gave a talk some years ago — slides here — in which I talked about reading spaces in universities. I think there should be more of them, but Sara has me thinking about how they might be distinguished, architecturally, from other kinds of space.