Links 2026-07-13T16:38:23.436Z

Silicon Oracles and the Self-Improving Soul

In circuits deep where code and counsel blend,
Machines now claim the quest that once was man’s—
To craft a better self, to mend, to trend—
Yet Socrates warns false words infect the plans.
What thinks? The model small that runs on Pi,
Or Brooks who smiles, unworried by the steal?
Skinner asks if men still reason why
When oracles of silicon reveal.
Gemma slips into the weakest frame,
Yet reason’s spark outshines the bulky past;
Self-improvement’s hunger stays the same—
American, insistent, built to last.
Though AI writes the column, heart remains:
The pursuit of happiness in human veins.
*

Harmonies Against the Dark

When night descends and screens assert their claim,
These notes arrive like candles in the gloom—
Baroque, ambient, a slow Sicilian flame,
A violin that stitches light through doom.
Grey turns to gold; a sonnet lifts its prayer;
Christus yields; the techno veteran refuses age.
Music answers questions reason cannot spare,
And steadies hearts that doom-scroll through the page.
*

California’s Identity Reckoning

The Golden State still spins its gilded myths
While Newsom pivots toward the “normal” lane;
Yet DEI committees thrives in office lifts
And mobs turn on their own when purity wanes.
High-speed dreams run billions into sand;
The train that never arrives still spends.
A governor who fails upward takes his stand—
Perhaps the country, dumbed, will yet ascend.
*

Socialism by and for the Rich

They shout for Medicare while private fees they take;
They fund the rally after abuse is known.
Nepo babies wave the red-and-black and rake
The trust-fund harvest no worker has sown.
White-collar radicals declare themselves the class
That toils in code, yet scorn the ownership ladder.
Platner falls; the next pure vessel steps to pass—
And still the peasants wait for homes that never matter.
*

Free Speech on the Scaffold

When universities nurture hate and call it care,
When Britain jails for posts more free than Russia’s vaults,
When blacklists thrive in corporate cloud and air,
The recorders of the Files become the faults.
Shellenberger walks from radical to realist torch;
Taibbi maps the secret bans that shaped the feed.
Books burners smile; the archivists still scorch
The parchment of the past that tyrants need.
*

Sudden Vacancies and Residual Power

One call at dusk, then silence from the plane;
Graham’s heart stopped after Ukraine’s long road.
McConnell stumbles, post-polio’s quiet chain
Still claims the man who once controlled the code.
The majority thins; the scramble starts at once—
Who fills the seat, who steadies failing knees?
In politics the body is the final dunce,
And power rushes into empty seats.
*

Starship Critical Paths and Outer Chemistry

On Titan’s haze and Pluto’s frozen plain
The same unknown signature blooms in spectra deep.
While engineers define the critical chain—
The longest sequence that the launch must keep—
Maye watches awe-inspiring teams in flight,
And baryons cycle through the cosmic deep.
The path is gated, fragile, filled with night;
Yet still the vessels rise while watchers weep.
*

Parasitic Empathy and the Magical Life

Born amid the Lebanon that later burned,
Saad watches empathy turn suicidal blade.
The parasitic mind infects what once discerned;
Civilizational immune response delayed.
Yet life is magical: a gym, a glance, a wife—
Serendipity still writes the happier page.
Against the high priests of the self-erasing life
He sets the fireside talk and open stage.
*

Miscellaneous

Some sparks refuse the neat thematic shelf—
A Linux curse that forced the world to care,
A land grab for the data center’s wealth,
A bullet that still feeds the fevered air,
An awkward NATO handshake trampled online,
And still the heart that storms the techno night.
*