Bradley Andrews

💬 An excerpt from Pablo Neruda’s The Pueblo. This whole poem has such “long live everything” spirit:

I believe that Heaven must include
that man, properly shod and crowned
I think that those who made so many things
ought to be masters of everything.
And those who make bread ought to eat!
And those in the mine should have light!
Enough by now of grey men in chains!
Enough of the pale lost ones!
Not another man will go past except as a ruler.
Not a single woman without her diadem.
Gloves of gold for every hand.
Fruits of the sun for all the obscure ones!

💬 From the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé:

“Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.”

🔊 A fascinating article on how whales and dolphins now yell in order to be heard over ship traffic:

Long-finned pilot whales navigating busy shipping routes are having to yell when communicating with other members of the pod… However, this was only noticeable for two types of calls: high-frequency and short-pulsed calls. Dolphins appear unable to increase their volume when producing low-frequency and two-component calls, which, according to the researchers, are the most important for locating other pod members after a dive. Essentially, they were already shouting as loudly as they could.

🧠 Having gone through a relatively strong Jungian phase in 2015-2016, I am astounded at how much of that school I find very disagreeable now. The exception, however, is the concept of “shadow work”— which remains absolutely invaluable.

💬 My final quote from Kierkegaard—a thought-provoking parable and a personal favorite which I believe helps unlock a main theme of his philosophy:

“Something wonderful happened to me. I was transported into the seventh heaven. All the gods sat there in assembly. By special grace I was accorded the favour of a wish. ‘Will you,’ said Mercury,’ have youth, or beauty, or power, or a long life, or the prettiest girl, or any of the many splendors we have in our chest of knick-knacks? So choose, but just one thing!’ For a moment I was at a loss. Then I addressed myself to the gods as follows: ‘Esteemed contemporaries, I choose one thing: always to have the laughter on my side.’ Not a single word did one god offer in answer; on the contrary they all began to laugh. From this I concluded that my prayer was fulfilled and that the gods knew how to express themselves with taste, for it would hardly have been fitting gravely to answer, ‘It has been granted to you.'”

Happy Birthday, Soren!

💬 Kierkegaard on the beautiful partnership between calling and correction, in Purity of Heart Is To Will One Thing:

A Providence watches over each man’s wandering through life. It provides him with two guides. The one calls him forward. The other calls him back. They are, however, not in opposition to each other, these two guides, nor do they leave the wanderer standing there in doubt. Rather the two are in eternal understanding with each other. For the one beckons forward to the Good, the other calls man back from evil. Of these two, the call of remorse is perhaps the best.

💬 Kierkegaard on the joys of living in a city and the delight of being attentive to strangers, from his journals:

“Precisely for this reason is life in the city so entertaining to him who knows how to find in human beings a delight which is more enduring and yields bigger returns than getting a thousand men to acclaim one for half an hour. Any person, if he had an open eye, may lead a life rich in enjoyment, merely by paying attention to others; and he who has his own work to do would do well to take heed not to be too much imprisoned by it.

But how pitiful to miss what costs nothing: no entrance fee, no expense for banquets, no dues to one’s society, no inconvenience and trouble; what costs the rich and the poor equally little and yet is the richest enjoyment, to miss an instruction which is not obtained from a particular teacher but en passant from any person whatsoever, from conversation with someone unknown, from every accidental contact.”

Describing movement through a city crowd as going “en passant” (a very unique chess move where a pawn steals the other by moving diagonally behind it) is so creative and clever. I think of it often being in NYC.

#neverbored

💬 Kierkegaard on the anxiety that accompanies riches, the pitfalls of wealth, and the assurance of Providence in Christian Discourses:

Why, naturally, the bird teaches us the surest way to avoid the anxiety of riches and abundance. Namely, not to lay up riches and abundance—bearing in mind that one is a traveller. And in the second place, it teaches us to be ignorant of the fact that one has abundance—bearing in mind that one is a traveller. For, like that simple wise man of ancient times, the bird imparts to us instruction in ignorance [by the way it lives]…

How then does the bird live? Well, it is God who every day metes out to the bird the definite measure, i.e. enough; but it never occurs to the bird that it has, or might wish to have, more than enough. What God gives every day is… enough. If the little bird quenches its thirst on a dew-drop, which is exactly enough, or if it drinks from the largest lake, it takes just as little. It does not require to have all that it sees, nor to have the whole lake because it drinks from it, nor to take the lake with it so that it may be secured for its whole life… It merely takes enough.

Oof, so good to re-read. I am quite convinced that one of the most powerful concepts in the world is the concept of enough.

💬 Kierkegaard on character, virtue, and knowledge in Works of Love:

The measure of a person is this: how far is he from what he understands to what he does, how great is the distance between his understanding and his actions?

💬 Kierkegaard on hypocrisy, deception, and trusting others (a personal favorite of mine) from Works of Love:

“But he who gets busy tracking down hypocrites, whether he succeeds or not, should be certain that this also is not hypocrisy, for such investigations are hardly the fruits of love. He, on the other hand, whose life really bears its own fruit will, without wishing it and without trying, unmask or even shame every hypocrite who comes near him; but one who loves will perhaps not even be conscious of this.”

💬 As a Mexican-American man, Cinco De Mayo is already a special day; but it also happens to be the birthday of my highly esteemed Soren Kierkeegard. I hesitate to promise a full Kierkegaardian blog post, but I will be posting intermittent quotes throughout the day:

Aren’t people absurd! They never use the freedoms they do have but demand those they don’t have; they have freedom of thought, but they demand freedom of speech. — From Either/Or

📖 NBER’s latest on the effect of LLMs in publishing:

• The rate of new e-book releases on Amazon have tripled between 2022 and late 2025.
• Categories such as Travel and Sports and Outdoors have experienced growth by a factor of more than five.
• Average book quality has declined in the LLM era.
• Categories experiencing faster growth in new titles show proportionally larger declines in average quality.
• Survey evidence indicates that nearly half of authors now use AI to assist with their work.
• Authors who debuted in the LLM era disproportionately produce low-quality work, while authors who were active before the arrival of LLMs have increased their output, but continue to account for much of the higher-quality production.