Category Archives: General

Meditating while the world burns

Posted on May 26, 2023 by smellincoffee

I recently asked BingAI to review the works of Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca, and Musonius Rufus for me, and then roleplay as a Stoic sage. We then had an interesting conversation on Stoicism, Epicureanism, Buddhism, Taoism, and human flourishing. Then, … Continue reading →

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Favorite YouTube Videos

Posted on May 24, 2023 by smellincoffee

This week’s prompt from Long and Short Reviews is…..favorite youtube videos. I can’t tell you how many hours of YouTube I’ve watched since 2007. Google probably could, but I think I’d rather not know. I had a painstaking list of … Continue reading →

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Humans

Posted on May 23, 2023 by smellincoffee

Published after the success of Humans of New York, here Brandon Stanton expand his range and deepens his connectivity with the people whose lives he shares in a single photo. In Humans of New York, readers were presented with an … Continue reading →

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Bing Reccommends me Books

Posted on May 17, 2023 by smellincoffee

I made Bing consider all of my reviews from 2007 forward and then asked it to recommend me some books. This took some doing, because it kept giving me lists that were mostly books I’ve already read,, but after repeated … Continue reading →

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Teesday Tuese & TT

Posted on May 16, 2023 by smellincoffee

Common exercises were foot racing, wrestling, boxing, leapfrog, hopscotch, quoits, and marbles. Some Rebs played tenpins after a fashion ironically unique, by rolling cannon balls at the pins, or at holes in the ground. The Life of Johnny Reb: The … Continue reading →

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Best of the Science Survey, 2017 – 2022

Posted on May 11, 2023 by smellincoffee

I recently realized that I’m in my sixth year of doing the Science Survey, and am marking the ocassion by thinking about the ten best reads of that period. For the uninitiated, the Science Survey is an attempt to structure … Continue reading →

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Top Ten Tuesday & Teaser

Posted on May 9, 2023 by smellincoffee

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by the Artsy Reader Girl, is “Top Ten Books You Recommend the Most”. But first, a Tuesday Tease! In his informal report to the President, Tom Ochiltree, aide to General Sibley, called accurately the losses … Continue reading →

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Missing that divine spark; plus, having Bing analyze me

Posted on May 5, 2023 by smellincoffee

Recently an article at Crisis magazine included an excerpt from the author’s attempt to get an AI to read all of his published articles and reproduce an essay in his style. He was pleased, and I was surprised, but not … Continue reading →

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Ten Books Bing and Bard Randomly Chose from my TBR

Posted on May 2, 2023 by smellincoffee

Today’s TTT is “ten books I randomly grabbed from my shelf”, but I wanted to see if the chatGPT version of Bing could choose ten random items from a list, so I gave it my 70+ strong TBR list. Then … Continue reading →

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April 2023 in Review

Posted on May 1, 2023 by smellincoffee

Well, welcome to May! I think Read of England was a tolerable success, though there were a lot of books I’d planned to read that I didn’t*, and since I did some book-buying to synch RoE with my other challenges … Continue reading →

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