It is high time to create a list of authors, publishers and content creators of whatever type you enjoy who would never do this to you:

We went from 100,000 new eBooks a month to 300,000.

Basically 2 out of 3 new books are now AI slop. pic.twitter.com/4tqYnZy9tW

— Alex & Books 📚 (@AlexAndBooks_) May 5, 2026

Nobody will protect the boundaries of our inner self. We will have to protect them ourselves. We will have to close ourselves down and patrol the perimeter. We will have to do our own border policing. Nothing that hasn’t been pre-vetted gets to come in.

There is no task more important at this moment than to establish very strict and impenetrable boundaries between our inner self and the world. The biggest class difference a decade from now will be between people who boundaried up hard and those who failed to do so.

This pic.twitter.com/aqiKBD5gNi

— Essential Mastery (@EssentialMastry) May 3, 2026

If you need to start over at 45, it can only mean that you messed up royally before then. The normal progression is that at every age you enjoy the fruits of what you lived and did before. The need to erase your previous life is not a good sign.

So no, don’t normalize treating your life like a series of discreet, unconnected episodes. Your life is a whole.

Somebody sent a Q&A to point out that we have a position titled “Associate Director of Empathy, Humility, and Action .”

I didn’t know that.

I googled it, and it’s true.

I want to claw my eyes out.

This is the same university that got rid of physics because physics is outdated.

All day I’m writing, reading, and entertaining Klara. I have three serious research-related deadlines looming. But I’ve also soured on Klara’s current teacher, so I keep her with me a lot. And it’s great. Klara started writing daily action plans because you can’t be around me and not have a strong need to surround yourself with action plans. We went to the mall, and it’s an experience all by itself on Mondays.

The bad part is that I’m besieged by people who clamor for attention and try to break into my happy reading – writing – child bubble. The drama at work is mushrooming. It’s like people have lost all sense of proportion as to what’s reasonable. Classes are over, so why can’t everybody simply go away and leave me alone?

Yale tracked 3,635 people over the age of 50 for 12 years. People who read books for more than 3.5 hours a week lived 23 months longer than people who didn’t read at all. A 20% drop in mortality risk. From sitting on a couch with a book. They controlled for age, sex, race, education, wealth, health status, and depression. The gap held across every single one.

What I don’t understand about these studies is how they avoid confusing correlation and causation. People who read a lot are of a different social class than those who don’t. They are more likely to take care of their health. They won’t drink gallons of soda. They won’t engage in dangerous activities. The study controlled for wealth but wealth doesn’t bring you into the intelligentsia.

Klara’s teacher took off points for the social studies test where Klara wrote that fresh air and exercise are better for children’s health than COVID vaccines. Then the teacher punished students who mentioned Trump’s name in class on the grounds that he’s so bad that she can’t allow him even to be mentioned.

She’s retiring at the end of the month, so it’s not some flighty young thing fresh out of college. I knew that something wasn’t right because the books she kept assigning were about the Holocaust and how FDR saved America.

I should have held out on publishing yesterday’s photo of the tomahawk steak because today I read the news that ads for meat have been banned in Amsterdam for some ludicrous woke reason. I could have used the photo to protest against this Dutch silliness.

I’m rereading the diaries of Rafael Chirbes for my new research project, and I wonder what he would have thought about the trajectory of the Left. Chirbes believed that one of his greatest callings was to be a food writer. He was a man of the Left before the Left ditched the working classes and embraced the life philosophy of fussy rich spinsters. The bans on eating meat and smoking (both of which are a working man’s alternative to therapy) would have shocked the writer.

It’s N’s birthday today, and he shared this Tomahawk steak with Klara:

He’ll keep eating it for the next two days because it is so huge.

I had fish with bok choy. I discovered bok choy late in life, and now I’m obsessed with it:

N said that, since it’s his birthday, he wanted to try doing something unusual, such as talking. He told us a very long and detailed story about people who died while trying to scale Mount Everest.

The semester is over, and I’m free to concentrate on my reading and writing. This was a busy semester and it’s a great relief it’s finally done. I’m not going to be in a classroom until January 2027. I still owe a few meetings but I’m bringing my research there and ignoring everybody else completely.

We have the same push at our university, and it’s a very bad idea:

The University System of Georgia (USG) implemented a policy in 2025 that requires syllabi to be publicly posted onto university websites before registration…

USG says the change “aims to ensure that all students have access to the critical information necessary for informed course selection and successful academic planning.” … UGA professors are required to have their syllabi available before registration opens for fall courses, a change from the past two semesters in which they were allowed to wait until one week before courses began.

We are told the exact same thing in a way that is so identical, it’s weird. “Students need it! It’s critical information! Successful planning!”

I’m opposed but almost nobody else is so the measure will be introduced.

Here’s why I am opposed.

There are two types of professors. There are those who teach the exact same course for decades, recycling it endlessly and repeating the exact same thing over and over again. For these professors it will be extremely easy to provide their syllabi 6 months before classes start, which is what “before registration” means.

There are also professors who come up with new material, new course structure, new readings, and new lectures all the time. Professors like me. I’ve never taught the same course in an identical way. This measure exists for one reason: to get rid of innovative, interesting teaching. It exists to shut up people like me. We will be locked into one standard syllabus that will be vetted and posted and it will reappear automatically on the website every semester. If you want to do something new or innovative, you’ll open yourself up to complaints for not following the pre-approved, pre-posted class program.

What I really despise is how it’s justified by supposedly being in the interests of students.

Yes, “nationalism is bad”, what a fresh, complex idea. We have only heard it and observed its consequences for the past 40 years. Let us strain our brains to their utmost capacity to process this brilliant insight.

Is it humanly possible to be any more vapid? My cat is capable of greater insight than these “all-round intellectuals.”