Anna of Wild Geese has a great video about personal curriculum.

This is something I thought about doing but like Anna, if I give myself too strict of a plan, I’ll rebel against it. I love this “research as ceremony” as a way to reframe learning, getting away from “colonialist” and individualistic learning. Also it’s a good point she made that the long form stuff used to be free and we had to pay for the lightweight stuff, but now it’s the other way around. The long form stuff is a lot harder now to access! 

So, by not stretching and exercising our minds enough, we’re doing the same thing as not getting enough physical exercise (something my condition already doesn’t let me do.)I really like the “lighthouse learning” concept too, and interest spirals are all I ever have. It’s similar to Montessori, but goes to another level. We need to “decolonize” learning. <3

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Reviewing my notes on Maria’s video about the Johann Hari book, Stolen Focus…

Working over my notes with Gemini, it was pointing out some of the reductionist language Hari used that I glossed over. I think that his initial concepts are sound, but he doesn’t go as deep as he could or should.He’s creating these very strict dichotomies. There are absolutely useless or even malicious books out there, and I’ve started reading a few only to quickly discard them. 

As for the internet, I don’t engage in social media much at all outside of seeing a few quotes here and there that have been curated by the few online writers I still follow. But when I was on social media, the fury did become overwhelming, which is why I inevitably quit all those services cold turkey. I hung around Instagram the longest, but I got no value there and when AI slop started invading my feed… [I finally returned to Instagram basically because it was the only service I was comfortable returning to for promoting the podcast. It’s gotten a BIT better than when I left, but getting traction is nigh impossible.]

Hari is onto some very strong distinctions between reading books vs screens, but he’s not making the distinction between what’s good content vs bad content. After all, you can read classics on screens. While, yes, the experience is different, you’re still getting a similar one, especially if you take time to handwrite quotes, in a sense “freeing” them from their digital prison. Hari is definitely romanticizing books a bit too far, and perhaps the “books as savior” trope is cliche, but his points aren’t so much incorrect as they are undersupported and reductive…

Perhaps the most misunderstood thing about reading that I’ve noticed is that every book will approach someone differently. But because books are static, a book that we may have dismissed in our younger years could be one that we devour in later years. It’s funny when you read a book after a couple decades and while you know it hasn’t changed, your interpretation of it has vastly altered. 

I was rereading Charlotte’s Web recently, my childhood favorite, for the first time in I can’t say how long, and it’s funny how much my memory of that book was tainted by the 1970’s cartoon adaptation, because the actual book is a lot more clever and is more a story about the gullibility of what people read in print than the actual plot itself. What is a memorable story about Wilbur and Charlotte is just a vehicle for White’s own frustration with the press and how foolish adults really can be in just accepting the status quo, while kids not having this ‘life experience’ are often unafraid to call it out when something seems unjust (which in the case of Wilbur, Fern turns out to be absolutely correct.)

The one part that really bothers me about what Hari said is that nonfiction isn’t capable of building empathy, and that’s just nonsense. It seems Hari has read the wrong nonfiction, and any “studies” that back up this claim are clearly flawed in their execution.

… I think that Maria is captivated by the Aesthetics, and at least partly the Rhetoric. But when it comes to the Philosophy side of what Hari is saying, she’s not being nearly Critical enough. Maria herself prefers fiction, so her bias is on full display. And so many books like Hari’s lean on studies that may or may not be properly executed.

Also, I’m not sure if I want to purchase the book now, looking into Hari’s past: “Until 2011, Hari wrote for The Independent, among other outlets, before resigning after admitting to plagiarism and fabrications dating back to 2001 and making malicious edits to the Wikipedia pages of journalists who had criticised his conduct.”

Um, I don’t think Maria knew this. I definitely need to look more into these authors before I run out to buy their books. Holy crap. Talk about a copy-paste mentality! Did he even write Stolen Focus? That’s not a shadow I can see anyone ever escape from!

Meanwhile, EB White is one of the most successful and lauded essayists (deservedly so) that tried his hand at children’s fiction and absolutely succeeded there, too. In Hari’s case, yeah, people make mistakes under pressure, but then he would maliciously edit Wikipedia pages of people who criticized him? That’s a bridge too far.

I’m not sure I want to give Hari, a known plagiarist and liar, any more of my time, even if the ideas are intriguing. His credibility is practically nonexistent… it’s a shock that his book did as well as it did!

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On how I read Charlotte’s Web now… White did actually say something in an essay about how he started writing children’s books because he’d basically given up on trying to get through to adults. Turns out, through Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, and Trumpet of the Swan, he succeeded because a lot of my own writing is directly inspired by his children’s stories and his essays.

As for the “duplicate work” idea, it is a topic I wanted to expand into something further, but ironically, I stumbled on the perfect example of someone in Hari who literally did duplicate work, but in the worst way possible. He used other people’s work as a short cut, made crap up when he felt he had to, and once he got called out for it tried to ruin others. It’s absolutely baffling to me that Maria would take his book seriously at all! 

Apparently, we have come to the point where the work is seemingly entirely separate from the one who wrote it, and honestly, I don’t think that’s possible. It’s sheer laziness and intellectual dishonesty to let the AI do all the work for you [or even a significant fraction of it], even if factually it ends up being correct. If Hari used too much AI, I can almost forgive that; but it’s how Hari responded to criticisms of his past work, the obvious flaws in his character, that make me unwilling to entertain his “work” any further.

So we must identify the correct way to interact with the ideas of others. I see some phrase or sentence or even paragraph I like and physically jot it down. Then I type it up, then allow the seed planted by whatever text fancied me to develop into a bloom that others can then benefit from. Hari doesn’t seem to care at all about the iteration process… see idea, transplant idea, and have AI rewrite it just enough that it’s “original.” Truth is, no idea is “original,” because all ideas that could ever exist already are out there. 

Like Henry Ford once famously said, “The air is full of ideas; they are knocking you in the head all the time.” While he wasn’t a particularly “nice” guy, Ford was absolutely correct about that.

So, I think the core of what I really want to say, leading from me getting back to handwriting notes to do the cognitive work that so many people are skipping out on, is that AI has made it too easy to become cognitively lazy and deficient. And while copy and pasting the output from generative AI isn’t precisely plagiarism, in some ways it’s worse because it’s “original” but the “author” did none of the work, and that is the issue.

… notably, Maria of Strange Lucidity handwrites all of her notes! That’s why I’m dumbfounded that she never bothered to research the author of Stolen Focus! Who knows how much of that book was Stolen Words, and by 2022, there were tools to rewrite other works as “original” so for all we know that whole book is a fraud! While written eloquently, the ideas she mentions turn out to be reductive and quantized into flattened prose! This is a key point, that I’m watching even respected literary critics somehow have these blinders on to who the author is. It’s almost like the author doesn’t matter anymore; an author is just someone who pushes buttons. For that to affect even a literary traditionalist like Maria is scary as hell to me! [It was a very rare moment of weakness for my Austrian Queen of Comparative Literature, for sure.]

… The key issue here is that authors as people who take ideas, remix and refine them organically and create something more durable and useful, aren’t valued nearly as much in that way anymore. Nowadays, a successful “author” identifies ideas that are sticky and trendy, then hires a team of copywriters (or, gasp, uses LLMs) to create something that appeals to a general audience. After that, this manuscript is then reviewed by other copywriters/LLMs and finally after being checked for “plagiarism” and perhaps adding a few “expert sources” to make it more credible, we get a finished product. It’s an assembly line of “knowledge work” but it’s not really authorship.

Writing should NOT be a commercial product, but rather an inevitable outcome of a mind working through countless sleepless nights fixated on certain ideas and making them work in harmony with each other. We should be reading at least in part the inner monologue of someone who is dedicated to their subject and shares that passion with the reader through the very cadence of the text. Hari’s book, from the few quotes I shared, sounds a bit too polished, and while not stinking of GPT-isms or anything like that, was likely polished up by expert editors who were paid to try and “redeem” Hari’s reputation. It makes me sick.

… So I’ve discovered a very serious flaw in reading culture; the fact that serious bookish types and booksellers are willing to carry a book from someone like Hari scares me. It seriously threatens the legitimacy of authorship more generally. If someone like Hari can publish a book after being exposed, how many authors are editing Wikipedia pages and  “stealing like an artist” on a regular basis and simply never get caught? This is why I’ve been so reluctant to publish anything. Why should I put the effort into putting together a volume of my best work when it will be ignored in favor of eloquent but ultimately reductive works like Stolen Focus?

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First I gotta mention Jeff Kent getting into the Hall of Fame. The contemporary era’s committee had a bizarre ballot this year. I’m kinda shocked he got in and not Delgado (who it seems was a vote short). Kent was always a borderline guy to me. I think if you vote him in, you also vote Delgado. But at least now Bonds, Clemens, and also Gary Sheffield have to wait until 2031 to try again. So at least we’ll get some new names next time. But I really am having a hard time putting HOF next to Jeff Kent’s name. I of course have no choice. I’m not angry but now anytime I see his cards I have to go, shit, he belongs in my hall of fame box! 

In fairness, Cooperstown Cred offers that maybe Kent’s glove wasn’t quite as bad as people thought. I remember reading his article back in 2017 and disagreed that Kent was deserving of the Hall. Well, screw me, because he’s now as much of a Hall of Famer as Ken Griffey Jr. And now rereading this article, realizing that his OPS+ was actually better than Roberto Alomar, Ryne Sandberg, or Craig Biggio… yeah, he played in a lot of pitcher friendly ballparks. OK now I can see it as defensible… but still, you have Bobby Grich and Lou Whitaker (and heck even Willie Randolph) with better WAR. Yeah, WAR isn’t everything. But at least I’m not as WTF… and by total zone, Alomar was actually not that much better than Kent? Huh… how did I not remember this? I did know that Biggio was overrated defensively (he was actually fairly below average) but wow. OK.

So, the Red Sox have been busy. I knew about the Richard Fitts for Sonny Gray trade, which made sense to me. Recently they also traded top prospect outfielder Jhostnyxon Garcia for pitcher Johan Oviedo, plus some other guys involved. Again, I can’t fault this trade. The Sox desperately need pitching depth and while I’m sure they like Jhos the Sox have a million outfielders for three spots. It makes sense. The lefty Samaniego could also factor into the Sox bullpen plans. Finally the Sox are making moves that make sense. I wouldn’t mind getting Pete Alonso in Boston, although the Orioles are in on him too. I was a little sad to see them let Stephen Matz go to the Rays; he was superb out of the pen.

The Jays are taking a three-year $30 million chance on Cody Ponce, who got extremely good in the KBO and even won an MVP (yes that’s rare for pitchers over there too!) Curious to see what pieces end up moving there as their payroll is pretty high right now. Berrios is rumored to be the odd man out of the rotation with Yeasavage coming out of nowhere last year. 

You know what’s funny. Cooperstown Cred is why I build my websites like I do. I actually asked him once on Twitter why he doesn’t compile all his great articles into a book. I’m not the first one to have asked this. His response was basically that he prefers to have a living archive, for cases (like Kent) where somebody finally gets in the Hall and all the people who disagreed with him (I disagreed with his support of Kent for the Hall back in 2017 but respected his argument) can finally suck it. No he didn’t say suck it but his point that having a living archive that he could later update while preserving his initial arguments (which he only rarely revises as most of these guys end up hall of famers anyway) was part of the fun to him. It’s purely fun, and obviously he’s still at it right now in December 2025. 

Yes, Cooperstown Cred is why I prefer to keep an archive, and honestly, it probably is the best way to go in the long-run. And yet these past few years I kept deleting everything and starting over. That’s why TPD is the “collection” stuff whereas Obscure Curiosities is the odds-and-ends that just don’t fit. The notes, the appendices, the et ceteras. But it’s funny that I now realize where my living archive idea came from!

I’m reading the more recently updated articles. I completely missed the fact Davey Johnson isn’t in the Hall as a manager and he’s now passed away. Also he was traded by the orioles to the braves because of the emergence of Bobby Grich. And davey hit 43 HR the next year, a fluky season. But it’s still the number one HR total for a second baseman in a single season! (It’s actually 42 as one was as a pinch hitter). Fulton county stadium was a nutty park for homers, and probably aided dale murphy quite a bit too! You could even say Hank Aaron benefitted, but I don’t think anyone will argue that. Davey was there for when hammering Hank beat Babe’s career record. I knew that Davey was a numbers guy as a manager but I didn’t realize he got a math degree after his playing days and before he managed. How about that? Geez he was quite the renaissance man! 

Also, Bill James made a system to rank managers for the hall of fame and I think he made it just to prove a point about Davey Johnson. Is bill james ever actually wrong? I can’t remember a time where he was! (Outside of guys who got hurt or had other non baseball issues which we can forgive).

As for Fernando Valenzuela I’d put him in the hall, but not just as a player. Also as a broadcaster. Spanish is a language folks! It’s also the language of most of today’s mlb players. Fernando mania had that much effect on the high Latino percentage of players today! Never discount that.