A computer can never be held accountable. Therefore a computer must never make a management decision.
Always a good time these days to repost this slide from an IBM internal presentation in 1979.
"Science describes accurately from outside, poetry describes accurately from inside. Science explicates, poetry implicates. Both celebrate what they describe. We need the languages of both science and poetry to save us from merely stockpiling endless ‘information’ that fails to inform our ignorance or our irresponsibility." from "Deep in Admiration" by Ursula K. Le Guin
"Deep in Admiration" was a talk given at the conference Anthropocene: Arts of Living on a Dangerous Planet at UC Santa Cruz in May 2014. The text appears as the foreword to the collection Late in the Day: Poems 2010-2014 (published by PM Press).
Excellent and empoweringe educacioun will nevir be "efficient" yn the waye that a businesse doth stryve to be "efficient." It ys the heighte of knavery to use one standarde to measure everye human activitye. Businesses are ther to make profits. Educacioun ys ther to make the future.
A rabbit in overalls and a goat in pants are sitting on the ground drawing pictures. The rabbit is saying “ART POSES A THREAT TO CORPORATOLRATIC SYSTEMS BECAUSE A PURPOSE OF ART IS TO REMIND THE INDIVIDUAL OF THEIR INHERENT AUTONOMY.”, the goat adds “THEIR HUMANITY.”
Make Art (1/4)
![I am all at a loose end since you left; I feel as if I haven't seen you for ten years. Every conversation that I have with my mother is about you. Everyone here loves you dearly.
Under what constellation were you born then, to be blessed with such qualities, so diverse and so rare?
I do not know the name of the feeling that I have for you. But it is a special tenderness, something I have never felt until now, not for anyone. We got on well together, didn't we? It was very agreeable.
It was so good that I do not want to share the pleasure with anyone else. If you happen to use Croisset in one of your books, do disguise it so that nobody recognizes it. I would appreciate it. The memory of your visit is just for the two of us, for me. That is how selfish I am.
I particularly missed you last night, at ten o'clock. There was a fire, over at my wood-merchant's. The sky was pink and the Seine was the colour of red-currant syrup. I worked at the pumps for three hours and I came home as weary as the Turk with the giraffe? [...]
One of the Rouen newspapers (Le Nouvelliste) reported your visit to Rouen, so that on Saturday after I had left you I met several bourgeois in a state of indignation over the fact that I had not put you on display. A former magistrate took the prize: 'If we had known that she was here... we would have... we would have ..? - five-minute pause, he's looking for the word - We would have... smiled at her.' That would have been rather meagre, don't you think?
[...]
To love you 'more' is difficult for me. But I do embrace you most tenderly.
Your letter this morning, so melancholy, stirred me. We parted company just at the moment when all kinds of things were about to find their way into words. All of the doors between the two of us are not yet open. You inspire a great respect in me and I do not have the courage to ask you questions, Farewell, I kiss your sweet and lovely countenance, and I am
Your
Gve Flaubert](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:2cadvbwpkxtuvmv2gpy5laml/bafkreicdbsmvqvjh7yrnhf4gmbf76b5thd2qdbekaniwqnwyedktpizko4)
I am all at a loose end since you left; I feel as if I haven't seen you for ten years. Every conversation that I have with my mother is about you. Everyone here loves you dearly. Under what constellation were you born then, to be blessed with such qualities, so diverse and so rare? I do not know the name of the feeling that I have for you. But it is a special tenderness, something I have never felt until now, not for anyone. We got on well together, didn't we? It was very agreeable. It was so good that I do not want to share the pleasure with anyone else. If you happen to use Croisset in one of your books, do disguise it so that nobody recognizes it. I would appreciate it. The memory of your visit is just for the two of us, for me. That is how selfish I am. I particularly missed you last night, at ten o'clock. There was a fire, over at my wood-merchant's. The sky was pink and the Seine was the colour of red-currant syrup. I worked at the pumps for three hours and I came home as weary as the Turk with the giraffe? [...] One of the Rouen newspapers (Le Nouvelliste) reported your visit to Rouen, so that on Saturday after I had left you I met several bourgeois in a state of indignation over the fact that I had not put you on display. A former magistrate took the prize: 'If we had known that she was here... we would have... we would have ..? - five-minute pause, he's looking for the word - We would have... smiled at her.' That would have been rather meagre, don't you think? [...] To love you 'more' is difficult for me. But I do embrace you most tenderly. Your letter this morning, so melancholy, stirred me. We parted company just at the moment when all kinds of things were about to find their way into words. All of the doors between the two of us are not yet open. You inspire a great respect in me and I do not have the courage to ask you questions, Farewell, I kiss your sweet and lovely countenance, and I am Your Gve Flaubert
“We parted company at the moment when all kinds of things were about to find their way into words.”
Find yourself a correspondent who writes to you as Gustave Flaubert did to George Sand.
Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/b...
I... I will be king
And you... you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can be heroes, just for one day
We can be us just for one day
"In strange and uncertain times such as those we are living in, sometimes a reasonable person might despair. But hope is unreasonable and love is greater even than this. May we trust the inexpressible benevolence of the creative impulse." - Robert Fripp #quote
Six years ago on this date, the pioneering champion of cutting-edge fiction, Richard Kostelanetz, let me reprint his 1988 survey of 13 neglected classics of experimental American fiction, most of which are still out of print decades later.
neglectedbooks.com/?...
The artes and humanityes are the soul of innovacioun
"No one is ever really alone. You are part of everything alive." - William S. Burroughs #quote
The first episode of Backlisted was published on 30th November 2015, ten years ago today. @backlisted.bsky.social
‘We can ask and ask but we can’t have again what once seemed ours forever.’ - J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country 🙏
www.backlisted.fm/episodes/1-j...
Happy Birthday to William Blake, who knows where the wild things are...
“There is no grief like the grief for your younger self, and the world you seemed to inhabit.” - Virgil S. Dinwiddie
The opening page of 'Bleak House' by Charles Dickens is always a treat.
Here's a wacky commission I recently finished-- A mash-up between Batman and Watchmen. Oh, with Dennis the menace thrown in for good measure! See comments for original cover.
It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles - the oppression of tyranny - to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke than to add anything that would tend to crush them.
My quote of the day
Abraham Lincoln
Waiting for the punk rock renaissance. The time is ripe for it.
Sometimes it's nice to remember that even Marcus Aurelius was like "you don't have to comment on everything bro"
But as I travel’d hither through the land,
I find the people strangely fantasied,
Possess’d with rumors, full of idle dreams,
Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear.
A panel from the Krazy Kat comic strip. Ignatz mouse is standing by a river and holding a brick. "There lies that 'Kat,' and here am I - and between we two a raging river runs - nor have I the strength of arm to hurl this Bonnie brick across - woe, oh woe, thou dost indeed brutally bear me down -"
"All interesting issues in natural history are questions of relative frequency, not single examples. Everything happens once amidst the richness of nature. But when an unanticipated phenomenon occurs again & again–finally turning into an expectation–then theories are overturned." - Stephen Jay Gould
Thinkinge of askinge Chat GPT a questioun about your plannes, thoughtes, ideas? Trye a tarot deck ynstead. Cheaper, bettir for the environment, bettir resultes, not evil.
A fun thing to do, if you like books and book mail and supporting independent literature, is to join our book club malarkeybooks.com/store/2025
I don't know about moving to another planet, but I suggest anyone with access to wildlife collect as many seeds and bulbs and cuttings as may be needed to propagate them should you move to another location . Also, just grow more stuff in your own backyard.
I think about this every day
