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When I was younger, I had a vintage typewriter that formerly belonged to a family member. It was painted pale green. I can’t recall the brand, but it still worked. In the late 90’s, though, it was impossible to acquire a new ribbon for it. Nowadays, they do produce universal typewriter ribbons for vintage manual…
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Self-motivation is a strange creature. People love to preach about building good habits, as if stacking enough of them together will build you a better life. Sure, routines have their place. But no habit will save you if you don’t know why you’re doing the thing in the first place. More than anything, I’ve always…
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Once Upon a Truth… In the beginning, there was Truth. No questions asked, carved into stone tablets and shouted from mountaintops by bearded men with suspiciously confident eyebrows. You knew where you stood. Reality was what the guy with the staff and the fire-belching bush said it was. These were the good old days, back…
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Let’s not pretend we live in a rational world. We reside, often too comfortably I might add, in a full-throttle, glitter-drenched Charlatans’ Paradise. Our modern world has become a kingdom ruled by confidence artists in limited-edition sneakers and bespoke suits, armed with buzzwords, ring lights, and disturbingly bright teeth. Our national pastime isn’t baseball anymore;…
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Back when I was offering manuscript editing services, I wrote up 8 tips for writing a great children’s book manuscript. I myself wanted to dabble in the realm of children’s literature, as E.B. White did with Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, and Trumpet of the Swan. However, my own dabbling in fiction has led me to…
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“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations For years, I’ve felt that nearly every single word I utter is but a shadow of the thought I wish to convey. Indeed, human expression is often forcibly funneled into the narrow alleyways of symbols and allegory, what we colloquially…
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There was a time when I felt that books could change the world. Indeed, books have had a great impact on world culture and society, but often not in the ways that immediately impact what they were intended to when they were first written. Of course, few authors ever gain any sort of significant celebrity.…
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The World State society presented in Brave New World might appear radically different from our own. However, there are some striking similarities, yet simultaneously it’s fascinating to see how certain things in our present culture have been totally done away with in the World State. Art, as we know it, no longer exists. However, the…
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Let’s put our futurist caps on for a moment. It’s 2035, and the New York Times Bestseller list is dominated by AI-generated novels.*War and Peace 2.0* by GPT-10 is the most talked-about book of the year, lauded for its “emotional depth” and “stunning insight into the human condition.” Meanwhile, human writers everywhere drown their sorrows…
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Today, we dive headfirst into the alluring, baffling, and often pretentious concept of aesthetics. After all, what could be more exhilarating than meticulously dissecting the very essence of beauty and taste with all the gusto of a sleep-deprived philosopher? Aesthetics are those tiny, nagging details that shape not just our tastes but our very sense…