Many of us are anxious about the rapid changes Artificial Intelligence (AI) is bringing to our careers. Some of us have 'played' a little with one of the AI applications, and we have read the articles that suggest scenarios from 'nothing to fear: it's a joke' to 'the end of civilization as we know it.'.
- From How to Beat ChatGPT: How to never say AI killed my job by Nicholas Bate
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In 1994, American Marxist historian Eugene D. Genovese wrote a memorable open letter to the Left on the necessity for the Left to answer the question: "What did you know, and when did you know it?"
Read the entire essay here.
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The fatal attraction of the government is that it allows busybodies to impose decisions on others without paying any price themselves. That enables them to act as if there were no price, even when there are ruinous prices paid by others.
- Thomas Sowell
How's this for variety?
Cultural Offering has American Heroes and the Sons of Whitaker Chambers.
[Photo by Melissa Walsh at Unsplash]
My guess is that I was in the sixth grade when I found a copy of In the Great Apache Forest in the school library.
It was the true story of George Crosby, a young Boy Scout who served as a fire spotter in the White Mountains of Arizona during the First World War.
The book had particular appeal because my family often camped in the area. I'd not only seen the remains of the old fire tower on the top of Mount Baldy but had even seen George Crosby when he and his wife owned a small store in Greer, Arizona.
The books that are currently recommended for children strike me as all message and no adventure. There is certainly little in many of them that would appeal to a young boy.
An important job. A dark forest. A large grizzly bear. A Winchester rifle.
What's not to like?
For some reason, I was sent to an Air Force Base for my initial Army physical exam. Most of the guys in the waiting room were Air Force personnel getting their retirement physicals.
They mildly teased me. ("You seem like a nice guy, but I think you're crazy to go into the Army.")
Not that the teasing didn't go in the other direction. During training I watched some Army artillery officers spoofing the Air Force in an effort to encourage the young soon-to-be Army officers to opt for the Artillery Corps.
One of them portrayed a dandified Air Force officer who pulled handkerchiefs out of his sleeves while swinging a golf club and declaring that air support was simply not possible because there was a small cloud in the distance.
That, of course, allowed an artillery gun crew to pull up and quickly fire off some rounds.
All joking aside, I never saw anything but a high level of respect for all of the services. There was an acknowledgement that each had an important mission.
Because each of them did.
[Photo by Joe Ridley/Beth Martin at Unsplash]
A natural consequence: When a full-time opening is advertised, it's often overloaded with the qualifications and responsibilities that once belonged to multiple positions. Job ads today often resemble Frankenstein's monster, cobbled together from various roles out of departmental desperation and internal compromises. I suppose it's theoretically possible that an exceptional candidate might be found who can cover five responsibilities that once belonged to three different faculty members - but it's unlikely. And candidates aren't mind readers; they don't know which of the five duties advertised are the ones that really matter.
- From "How to Fix Our Cold, Inefficient Hiring: Too many searches fail to woo candidates with kindness and professionalism" by David D. Perlmutter in The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 18, 2025
These are times when large numbers of college students have never read a book and when it's possible to get a degree without having read Shakespeare.
I believe this is disastrous when it comes to developing important insights on human nature.
If I were meeting with a class of men and women in their early twenties and our main topic was how the world really operates, my initial inclination would be to assign the following works of fiction:
Germany's chancellor wants Syrian asylum seekers to go home.
I hope the Swedes and the Irish are paying attention.
Younger generations are told that if they do the same things as the boomers did, things will work out well for them. But society has changed very drastically, and it doesn't work in quite the same way. Housing is way more expensive. It's much harder to get a house in a place like New York or Silicon Valley, or anywhere the economy is actually doing well and there are a lot of decent jobs. People assume everything still works, but objectively, it doesn't.
- Peter Thiel, "Capitalism Isn't Working for Young People" (The Free Press, 11/7/25)
- Jeremy Wayne Tate
I'm preparing a plan for some podcasts.
They'll be relatively short and will cover a range of subjects.
If you think of any topics that you'd like me to address, please let me know.
[Photo by Will Francis at Unsplash.]
Mitigating Chaos, a man of fine reading tastes, reminds us that this is National Fountain Pen Day.
[I'm surprised the schools aren't closed.]
He has inspired me to upgrade to a higher-level fountain pen. I had a great experience with a small and inexpensive Kaweco Sport pen and then a bad one with its replacement.
A recent article about the effect of inexpensive Chinese fountain pens had a collector who said that if his place was on fire, he'd rescue a Pelikan.
Hmm.
A Layman's Blog has a magic folk-rock video from the Sixties.
I recall quickly buying their first album.
Coffee, plenty of it.
Legal pads.
Pens, both fountain and Jetstream Uni 0.7.
Typing paper.
Vicks VapoInhaler.
American Heritage Dictionary.
Paperclips.
Large trash bags.
Billing sheets.
Rough outlines.
Handel. Copland. Bach.
The New York Times: The full text of Zohran Mamdani's victory speech.
[Photo by Francesca Saraco at Unsplash]
"It was Simchat Torah, a major Jewish holiday, and the Sabbath as well, when Hamas jihadis stormed into Israel and laid waste with a brutality and inhumanity that was reminiscent of the darkest days of National Socialist Germany."
From Antisemitism: History & Myth by Robert Spencer
I cannot recommend the works of Bruce Catton strongly enough.
He was a thorough historian, and his books are beautifully written.
The October 7 attacks deserved a better response from the civilized nations.
[Photo by Marek Studzinski at Unsplash]
I’ll start worrying about Tyrannosaurus paddocks once you convince me we’re actually close to cloning dinosaurs. In the meantime, we have real problems to tackle.
- Cal Newport
They called him Moishe the Beadle, as if his entire life he had never had a surname. He was the jack-of-all-trades in a Hasidic house of prayer, a shtibl. The Jews of Sigher - the little town in Transylvania where I spent my childhood - were fond of him. He was poor and lived in utter penury. As a rule, our townspeople, while they did help the needy, did not particularly like them. Moishe the Beadle was the exception. He stayed out of people's way. His presence bothered no one. He had mastered the art of rendering himself insignificant, invisible.
- From Night by Elie Wiesel
On the night of February 27,1933, smoke and flames gutting the Reichstag building in Berlin marked the Wagnerian end of the short-lived German democracy.
- From The Crucial Years 1939-1941 by Hanson W. Baldwin
There are some books that bring pure pleasure via the content and the writing.
I cannot always see Trieste in my mind's eye. Who can? It is not one of your iconic cities, instantly visible in the memory or the imagination. It offers no unforgettable landmark, no universally familiar melody, no unmistakable cuisine, hardly a single native name that everyone knows. It is a middle-sized, essentially middle-aged Italian seaport, ethnically ambivalent, historically confused, only intermittently prosperous, tucked away at the top right-hand corner of the Adriatic Sea, and so lacking the customary characteristics of Italy that in 1999 some 70 percent of Italians, so a poll claimed to discover, did not know it was in Italy at all.
- From Trieste and The Meaning of Nowhere by Jan Morris
You know the version of the conversation game where everyone lists their choice of extraordinary dinner companions. I propose a collection of essayists. You might not always agree with them – in fact, I’m certain you won’t because they’d disagree with one another – but you’ll be in for fine and often highly amusing writing.
I’ll set aside
some well-known powerhouses such as James Baldwin, G. K. Chesterton, Joan Didion,
George Orwell, Jonathan Swift, and Tom Wolfe.
Here goes:
Arguably:
Essays by Christopher
Hitchens
Cultural
Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts by Clive James
Cultural
Cohesion: The Essential Essays
by Clive James
Essays in
Biography by Joseph
Epstein
In a Cardboard
Belt! Essays Personal, Literary, and Savage by Joseph Epstein
Latest
Readings by Clive James
Once More
Around the Block by
Joseph Epstein.
The Ideal of
Culture: Essays by Joseph
Epstein
Things Worth Fighting For: Collected Writings by Michael Kelly
City Journal: Daniel J. Flynn has some ideas for the newly ousted president-elect of the Oxford Union.
He needs to read Flynn's new book on Frank Meyer.
It is no surprise that Nicholas Bate has a lot of great stuff in the pipeline.
[Photo by Wolfgang Weiser at Unsplash]
Return now to the old days of Classics Illustrated Comics.
[With a modest proposal for college bookstores.]
This has become an Execupundit tradition:
Kent Risley with a marvelous recitation of the poem.
[Photo by Elissa Wyne at Unsplash]
And yet, buried under layers of luxury and self-doubt, America’s political and economic institutions still hum with energy. Most Americans still exhibit the bourgeois democratic values that have sustained the nation on its journey to greatness. If our current political leadership doesn’t seem quite up to the task of both articulating and executing popular desires, a new generation is waiting in the wings. These new leaders will have personal and political faults of their own, of course. Leaders always do. But they may also be better suited for the task ahead. Better equipped to defend what’s best in America.
Read all of Matthew Continetti's essay in Commentary magazine.
They examined everything except the key issue and the key witness.
But they thought they were thorough because they had explored so many other things.
Alvin Bragg has been given the gift of two opponents who will split the vote.
A structural reason why New Yorkers should consider experience when choosing a mayor.
[Photo by Triston Dunn at Unsplash]
The boy was wild and perfect, standing on the central table and clapping his hands. He had the eyes of a saint, Frau Möller recalled afterwards, an earthly saint like Francis, or a great thinker like Galileo. She had noticed him when he came in, past her little alcove by the door. She was not there to oversee the youth club. The young were specifically enjoined by the Party to organise themselves. Spaces were to be set aside for self-education and cultural awareness, and music was a part of that. If these gatherings became rowdy and inappropriate - if they were not strictly what had been envisioned by the committee - that was no concern of hers. She was employed only to keep the coats and close up. She had no other role.
- From Karla's Choice: A John le Carré Novel by Nick Harkaway
Rob Henderson on the youthful supporters of Mamdani.
Remember the informal slogan of John Lindsay when he ran for mayor in 1965: "He is fresh while everyone else is tired."
Great slogan. He turned out to be a disaster.
I've been reading Civil War histories with my breakfast. It's been delightful. Makes the current times seem sane.
Did you know that when South Carolina seceded from the Union - the first state to do so - one of its leaders wanted the new country to be named the Confederate Slave-Holding States of America?
Catchy name. There's always at least one idiot in any large meeting.
Gil Troy in Commentary Magazine takes us back to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the United Nations, and evolving anti-Zionism. An excerpt:
It was and is the Great Inversion—and Perversion. Despite being mass-murdered by Nazi racists, Jews became racists. Despite resisting Ottoman, and then British, colonialism controlling their indigenous homeland, Zionists then became settler-colonialists. Despite there being many dark-skinned Israelis and light-skinned Palestinians, Israelis became “white oppressors,” racializing this nationalist clash. And despite enduring history’s largest genocide, Jews were and are accused of “genocide.”
The problem with spending time with students, or on students, or writing book reviews or essays is that none of those activities do anything for you professionally. Academics are rewarded for one thing and one thing only: research. Scholarly publication. Nothing else counts; anything else is a step toward professional suicide. I knew this, of course, and it tormented me. But, to quote a phrase, I could do no other.
- William Deresiewicz, "Why I Left Academia (Since You're Wondering)" in The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society.
I have completed the research for the report and have several stacks of paper as proof.
To those I have added the rough, very rough, drafts of approaches that go in different directions, each one altered by new perspectives that come to mind, but now, like a stew simmering in a large pot, they await the spices I carry, even though a great deal of the report's flavor will be achieved by subtraction, not addition.
And much will depend upon the connecting theme, which is yet to be chosen.
That selection will be made with care because the best themes have one thing in common: the ability to bite.
[Photo by Getty Images for Unsplash+]
Everybody agreed that the Washington's Birthday ball was the most brilliant event of the winter. Unlike most social functions in this army camp by the Rapidan, it was not held in a tent. There was a special weatherproof ballroom - a big box of a building more than a hundred feet long, whose construction had kept scores of enlisted men busy. Some of these had been sent into the woods to fell trees. Others had taken over and operated an abandoned sawmill, to reduce the trees to boards. Still others, carpenters in some former incarnation, had taken these boards and built the building itself, and it was pleasantly odorous of new-cut pine, decorated with all of the headquarters and regimental flags which the II Army Corps possessed. The flags may have been worth seeing. It was a boast of this corps that although it had suffered nearly 19,000 battle casualties it had never yet lost a flag to the enemy.
- From A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton
Cultural Offering's Buckley has passed.
It is never easy. It's been several months in our household, and I still find myself looking for our dog.
I do believe that dogs go to heaven. It wouldn't be heaven without them.
This book answers a simple question that is never asked. How did the Roman state survive for nearly 2,000 years?
- From The Romans: A 2,000-Year History by Edward J. Watts
My Substack on the rationalizations is here.
Excerpt: We didn’t kill them. Our sole responsibility was to sell their furniture as well as the other property they left behind when they moved. And, of course, we made sure their homes had new owners.
[Photo by Colin C Murphy at Unsplash]
Nicholas Bate at Hunter Gatherer 21C is becoming the go-to person for the genuine life.
[Photo by John Michael Thomson at Unsplash.]
"Friendship is devolving, in other words, from a relationship to a feeling - from something people share to something each of us hugs privately to ourselves in the loneliness of our electronic caves, rearranging the tokens of connection like a lonely child playing with dolls."
One historical figure who becomes even more impressive with closer study.
What a remarkable man!
[Photo by Getty Images for Unsplash+]
When our daughter Anna was born in July 1985, I was two years into a marriage that had made me happier than I had ever been and nine months into the unexpected success of Losing Ground. My two daughters from a previous marriage loved Catherine, their new stepmother, and were enthusiastic about having a new sister. I had no sense of anything lacking in my life, least of all religion. I was a happy agnostic.
- From Taking Religion Seriously by Charles Murray
Seth Mandel on antisemitism in the world of British soccer. An excerpt:
To review: a member of Parliament called for Maccabi fans to be banned from a soccer match because violent anti-Semites didn’t want them there. He then celebrated when his demand was honored by the local police. What kind of country does this sound like?
Check out the essay by Helen Andrews at Compact magazine.
An excerpt:
"Experts chimed in to declare that everything [Larry] Summers had said about sex differences was within the scientific mainstream. These rational appeals had no effect on the mob hysteria."
"An Assortment of What Ifs" has been getting a surprising amount of attention.
Perhaps it taps into the spirit of the times.
New York magazine:
Sarah Thankam Mathews on why the job search has become a humiliation ritual.
A telling quote: "It feels like I'm just trying to make my robots talk to their robots."
We need to reduce the use of tech in both the job application and screening process.
[Photo by Markus Winkler for Unsplash]
"He's been taking pictures three years, look at the work," Maurice said. "Here, this guy. Look at the pose, the expression. Who's he remind you of?"
- From LaBrava by Elmore Leonard
There are decisions that are quickly made and others that are mulled over with advisors.
All well and good.
But the strange part is that the significance of the decision often has little influence on which technique is used.
I've seen major decisions that are quickly and casually made while great time is devoted to minor, easily reversible, decisions.
And a category that deserves special study contains issues that bubble along and never come close to being decided.
We were at prep, when the Head came in, followed by a new boy not in uniform and a school-servant carrying a big desk. Those who had been asleep woke up, and every boy rose to his feet as though surprised in his labours.
- From Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
I have concluded that Donald Trump has two almost supernatural powers.
The first is being grossly underestimated.
The second is the casual way in which he drives many of his critics absolutely insane.
Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.
- From Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
