Bradley Andrews

💬 Okay, okay—one more banger from Mcluhan (from the same essay):

The need of our time is for the means of measuring sensory thresholds and of discovering exactly what changes occur in these thresholds as a result of the advent of any particular technology. With such knowledge in hand it would be possible to program a reasonable and orderly future for any human community. Such knowledge would be the equivalent of a thermostatic control for room temperatures. It would seem only reasonable to extend such controls to ail the sensory thresholds of our being. We have no reason to be grateful to those who juggle the thresholds in the name of haphazard innovation.

💬 From Mcluhan, in his essay on The Relationship Between Environment and Anti-Environment (1965) :

The content of any system or organization naturally consists of the preceeding system or organization, and in that degree acts as a control on the new environment. It is useful to notice all of the arts and sciences as acting in the role of anti-environments that enable us to perceive the environment. In a business civilization we have long considered liberal study as providing necessary means of orientation and perception. When the arts and sciences themselves become environments under conditions of electric circuitry, conventional liberal studies whether in the arts or sciences will no longer serve as an anti-environment. When we live in a museum without walls, or have music as a structural part of our sensory environment, new strategies of attention and perception have to be created.

Oh, the things that this man would have had to say in modern times.

💬 A great tidbit from the current read, Trickster Makes This World by Lewis Hyde:

One of Picasso‘s favorite assignments for a young artist was to have him or her try to draw a perfect circle. It can’t be done; everyone draws a circle with some particular distortion, and that distorted circle is your circle, an insight into your style. “Try to make the circle as best you can. And since nobody before you has made a perfect circle, you can be sure that your circle will be completely your own. Only then will you have a chance to be original.” The deviations from the ideal give an insight into the style, and thus, Picasso says, “from errors one gets to know the personality.”

💾 This blog post from Discourse.org on why they are staying open source in the age of AI is really good:

Biological immune systems work because they’re exposed to threats. They encounter pathogens and build memory. An immune system that’s never been challenged will collapse at the first real infection. Open-source codebases work the same way - vulnerabilities that get found and patched make the software harder to attack. Security researchers who read the code add layers of defense, and public audits build institutional knowledge about where the weak points are and how to shore them up.

💬 From Ezra Pound:

“You can spot the bad critic when he starts by discussing the poet and not the poem.”

🚀 I learned today that a small art piece called Moon Museum was smuggled onto the moon by multiple artists including Andy Warhol, Forrest Myers, and John Chamberlain during the original Apollo 12 mission. The fact that it was unauthorized is so amusing to me, and feels appropriate.