2025 Thoughts
✦ January
I was wrong about The Grapes of Wrath
A while back I wrote a post in which I compared The Grapes of Wrath to Atlas Shrugged, noting that
Thoughts
A reverse-chronological log of what might be important.
2025 Thoughts
✦ January
Blogs that have improved the way I think
I wrote last week that if you started your own blog (not a Substack, that's the metaphorical equivalent
2025 Thoughts
✦ January
More on teaching
So that piece of writing I put up yesterday, "To teach a child piano," is worth reading for
2025 Thoughts
✦ January
To teach a child piano
To teach a child piano is to teach them how to master their environment.
This, in turn, teaches them how
2025 Thoughts
✦ January
Showing my work (and more thoughts on work in general)
The MELISANDE excerpt will be behind the paywall as usual, and if you are curious why I even have a
2025 Thoughts
✦ January
A bit about money, plus Herbert Croly's The Promise of American Life
I have a new personal finance advice column in Vox today: I plan to retire in 2025. Am I financially
2025 Thoughts
✦ January
Recalibrating
Larry is in the other room practicing a piano accompaniment that sounds just enough like the theme to The Young
2025 Thoughts
✦ January
Is Beast Games the final form of philanthropy?
Last night Larry and I went through all of the existing music for MELISANDE and talked about what worked and
2025 Thoughts
✦ January
Games and wagers
"Exponential" is scored, which means that I am very likely to both start and finish "Enter the
2025 Thoughts
✦ January
How does this book exist
I am, unbelievably, almost finished scoring the exponential growth number for MELISANDE. Tomorrow I'm going to do the
2025 Thoughts
✦ January
Avoid all that which would ask you not to think
It only took me four iterations before I was able to start building the accompaniment for MELISANDE's big
2025 Thoughts
✦ January
More Middlemarch, more MELISANDE
I am testing out several different ways of accompanying the exponential growth number for MELISANDE, by which I mean I&
2025 Thoughts
✦ January
Middlemarch and MELISANDE
(It's a little hard to tell because Ghost blurs the words before the paywall, but I recorded and
2025 Thoughts
✦ January
The math either works or it doesn't
I wrote out the vocal lines for the exponential growth song this morning and began putting in some chords for
2025 Thoughts
✦ January
The thing about creating an integrated work of art
I began scoring the "exponential growth" number for MELISANDE this morning. This will be a complicated piece because
2024 Thoughts
✦ December
"Nice is different than good"
If objectivism is the philosophy of reality, reason, integrity, and trade, and if this philosophy is in fact the best