"Let us take down one of those old notebooks which we have all, at one time or another, had a passion for beginning. Most of the pages are blank, it is true; but at the beginning we shall find a certain number very beautifully covered with a strikingly legible hand-writing. Here we have written down the names of great writers in their order of merit; here we have copied out fine passages from the classics; here are lists of books to be read; and here, most interesting of all, lists of books that have actually been read, as the reader testifies with some youthful vanity by a dash of red ink." — Virginia Woolf

i think parts of history like this are so interesting

Commonplace book - Wikipedia

Momsdummy

defence of the "rugged individual" from collectivism is the foundation of preventing tyranny.

it feels like its going to get harder, and require more awareness and discipline to steer clear of stupid conversations and arguments. there is a pop-cultural momentum steam rolling toward stupid. need to find roots of goodness, hope, truth, and love to keep that in the forefront of conciousness. feels like the path is going to get more narrow.

describing something to an ai is not a unique creative act.

some dont have a sense of identity outside of outrage. they create conflict because its the only time they feel focused, with purpose.

someone tried to commend me on my life choices today. I had to politely explain to them that i am, in fact, completely retarded, and the grace and mercy of God is the thing to marvel at. Cause i would have made a complete mess of shit left to my own devices. 🤷

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago. iyk,yk. “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

spend all day being silly with my wife. what a great new years gift. 💝