Welcome Alan Jacobs to The Dispatch!
Read Alan's first Dispatch piece: https://thedispatch.com/article/artificial-intelligence-college-essay-teachers-innovation/
04.03.2026 16:15
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Welcome Alan Jacobs to The Dispatch!
Read Alan's first Dispatch piece: https://thedispatch.com/article/artificial-intelligence-college-essay-teachers-innovation/
"Hey Mr. President, buy me Bonestorm or GO TO HELL!"
I think the next U.S. military adventure should be called BONESTORM.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=50Ir...
I also have a shorter essay in this issue on "How Not To Save the Planet":
hedgehogreview.com/issues/human...
New issue of @hedgehogreview.bsky.social out today, and I have a lead essay trying to outline the prospects for a renewed humanism:
hedgehogreview.com/issues/human...
To me you're like Dylan becoming a Christian and abandoning his long history of greatness and when people asked him to play "Lay Lady Lay" he'd say "I don't DO that any more." The Pro Vercelli saga was your HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED.
Two errors on this map: What it calls “Atlantic Ocean” is actually “American Ocean” and what it calls “Pacific Ocean” is, properly speaking, “Trump Ocean.”
"I Have No Mouth and I Must Teethe"
Make Room (for More Teeth)! Make Room!
Ruth, you're the perfect person to write this! So pleased to get this news.
Let this give you hope in the New Year: No matter how powerful AI becomes, it will never quench the primal human desire to tell total strangers on the internet that they're stupid and wicked.
♫
Marry me, Chicken Risotto
I never thought you were immortal
I wanted dinner
Not much to ask for
But now I love you
I’ll keep my promise
Because I love you
I suggest you use your NYT bully pulpit to make GENERATION HYDRATION happen.
A few months ago I was working in the Wade Center's reading room when a young man came in to see the books. When he was told that he'd have to leave his water bottle outside he looked pained, paused, and then left the building.
In the TLS, Austin Spendlowe says that my biography of *Paradise Lost* is “an enduringly readable work of intellectual history that will justify the ways of Milton to many.”
www.the-tls.com/regular-feat...
An enormous frustration for all involved. My condolences. I would love to see that book!
On Wednesday my parish church held a beautiful Choral Evensong service, featuring guest preacher Rowan Williams! You may watch the stream here:
www.youtube.com/live/sVAxctZ...
— starting with two preludes played beautifully by our organist and choirmaster Eugene Lavery.
I grieve to see that no one corrected the thoroughly ungrammatical blurb.
I've always been confused about this: when do you lot say Britian and when do you say Englnad?
I'm looking forward to seeing the blurb:
"Adam is wrong." — eminent professor Alan Jacobs
Yes, "full strength" is wrong — he had gained *enough* strength to appear openly. At the outset of the story the Nazgul flee from hobbits in Crickhollow -- and Nob in Bree can scare them away from the unconscious Merry. They have a long way to go. Anyway the main point here is that Adam is wrong.
But during Gollum's possession Sauron was disembodied & powerless, yes? As Sauron returned slowly to power & gathered his Nazgul to him, "it was long since [Gollum] had worn it much: in the black darkness it was seldom needed" (Gandalf). It came to Bilbo just as Sauron regained his full strength.
The big A.I. companies’ business model
I wrote about Richard Wilbur's greatest poem and how a bit of it was (I think) inspired by his reading Dorothy L. Sayers.
blog.ayjay.org/the-truth-in...
2023 workflow: web search and then click through pages until you find the info
2024 workflow: Ask chatbot, copy and paste answer
2025 workflow: Ask chatbot, doubt its answer, web search and then click through pages until you find the info
I explained to my Buy Me a Coffee supporters why I ask them to buy me dragons:
buymeacoffee.com/ayjay/on-dra...
I don't think you're a physician to those weeds, since you're killing them. Avoid euphemism, please.
That *is* a problem but one I think Mr Dershowitz can handle.
You rightly point out that the new South Park episode "depicted a nude Donald Trump, lying in bed with Satan" but you neglect to mention that Satan has filed suit for defamation of character. That's journalistic malpractice, Brian!
At @christianitytoday.com Matthew Mullins writes very generously about my new book on PARADISE LOST:
www.christianitytoday.com/2025/07/para...