Hundreds: Weetzie Bat finishes the first and the Desert Prophet begins the second

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I try very hard not to care how many books I read in a year.

But the nature of recording all the books I read (a sin I've been committing since 2007) is that I've very aware of the number and, being very aware of it, I must care a little bit. And I do. But I think I've managed to hold it to the pleasure of passing #100. Which, this year, I now have done.

Thanks for travelling with me.

Do you have a favorite book, so far, from your 2025? 

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097) Math for English Majors: A Human Take on the Universal Language by Ben Orlin, finished November 13

I was delighted by this book but I still think Math with Bad Drawings is the best entrypoint to his helpful world of relearning how to like math.

Everyone learning to be an elementary-school teacher should read that book. Then this one, why not? 

about ten weeks

☞

098) This One Summer by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki, finished November 14

I came across this a couple months ago via my friend Jake.

I trust Jake's taste and I was compelled by his breakdown so I picked it up from the library. It is just as he says, an excellent slice-of-life comic beautifully paced. I found it stronger than their follow-up (which I've already read), fwiw.

It's the story of two girls. The year-and-a-half gap in their age begins to matter in new ways this summer as the older is getting new (and perplexing) feeling about (very much the wrong) boys. The spend the summer playing at the beach and discovering horror movies and watching teenagers and the adults in their houses. It's measured. It's smart. It doesn't push. It's very well made.

Jake was right. 

a couple weeks maybe

☞

099) The Things You Have to Do Before I Buy You a Phone by Adam Ferguson, finished November 14

We didn't have a great policy for our kids when it comes to phones. The main thing was we're not going to get you one so earn it yourself. The first one did this and got it, if I remember correctly, as a high-school sophomore. The other two had friends with phones lying around their house who fell sorry for them. There are so many superfluous phones in the world now that the old policy's a bad policy.

I think the daughter, so far behind her brothers, needs a different policy. I was thinking about getting her a cool dumb phone and that still might be the best solution but this book is also a pretty great solution.

Some of the things are obvious (earn the money) or sensible (navigate a drive without a phone) but some are surprising if you're taking getting-a-phone as life's purpose. Why should I write a letter or attend a religious service or visit the fire station or build a fire? But that's the genius of the book. It's so easy to disappear into a phone, never to return. This is sort of like The Dangerous Book for Boys only with a pretty good carrot hanging from the end to keep a kid motivated to live a little.

I was tempted to try and get copies of this book to teach—this would be an excellent semester-long project: do, say, four of the items (I might need to give them point values so they don't just do the easy ones) then write about some, present to the class about others.

It's a great idea but more appropriate to a junior high. Some of the stuff in the book (and the book's general rhetorical stance—I mean, #50 is Turn Fourteen) just skews younger. But it's a good idea and it would be cool if this became a textbook in, say, a seventh-grade English class. 

Regardless! It's a cool book and I may well use it for my daughter. If you're trying to figure out how to navigate this now-universal step in growing up, check it out. You might like what you find.

It might work particularly well for an entire friendgroup? Dunno. If you try it, let me know. 

maybe seven days over three or four weeks

☞

100) Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block, finished November 17

I love this book. It's been sixteen years since my first (and only prior) read. That read opened up an aspect of my style I'd tamped down by trying to be an adult and allowed me to start writing Curses and Llew, a book I'd been trying to write for four years. Since 2009, I've worked on COLl (its abbreviation in my notes) in starts and spurts. Rereading Weetzie Bat is a bit startling because things in my book have parallels to things in Weetzie Bat that I had completely forgotten. We share, it seems, an attitude on sex and death and art's intersections.

Anyway, still haven't finished COLl. But I will! I've finished what I think of as the first third, but maybe I've set it down (again) because it's now (roughly) the length of Weetzie Bat? Something to think about.

Anyway, sometimes it's a mistake to reread something you loved long ago. But not today. Love this book. 

probably three days two weeks apart

☞

101) The Desert Prophet by Camilla Stark, finished November 18

 I'm not sure I've read a comic book that behaves quite this way. Camilla draws the Desert Prophet and his friends with the casual certainty of a daily strip artist. She displays them in different ways at different scales and under different emotions like manga. She's deeply literate (I planned to get more into this, but there's an appendix laying out most of the references, so I guess I won't.) It's picaresque in a sacred way ala Piers Plowman or any Everyman story (or, as she says in the notes, the Little Prince). Yet it's deeply contemporary, concerned with contemporary crises. And deeply Mormon, casually conversant with our sacred rites and movement. It is, in short, mystical. A holy work. A work that proposes that the temporal is spiritual, whether you're paying attention or not; a work that provides a form of nihilistic optimism; a work that encourages moving forward no matter no matter no matter what. Plus, it's beautifully drawn and humorously drawn in striking chiaroscuro that rewards attention but does not allow the eye to rest.

two days

☞

Previous books of 2025
(and years more distant)

A couple thoughts on Thornton Wilder

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I read Our Town in high school (sophomore year?) and my class also watched (I think) the classic version starring Hal Holbrook. I don’t remember much about it now other than how it made me feel and how much I liked it.

Just a few years ago I read The Skin of Our Teeth which has some of the same modernist tendencies but really could not be any more different from Our Town (I think; cf previous paragraph). It’s a weird little domestic comedy that covers all of human history.

Then, just two years ago, I read his novel The Bridge over San Luis Rey because someone compared Just Julie’s Fine to it. Again. Decidedly modern and so unlike the other two.

And now I’ve watched a production of The Matchmaker.

I don’t usually write about plays I see and expecially not school plays as writing about minors seems untoward to do behind their backs and they are not my intended audience so—

I’ll just say this was perhaps the most challenging script I’ve seen them take on and one of the best scripts I’ve seen them take on. I think the best under the current theater teacher. And some of the best acting work I’ve seen too. I shan’t say more than that.

What I want to talk about is the play.

I recently saw Hello, Dolly! for the first time but I was not prepared for how similar it would be to it’s ur-text. Very similar, in fact. That said, the musical added two characters and sanded down the original’s sharp political edges. Because this play has bite! Oo, baby! Talk capitalism to me, Wilder!

Anyway. Now I’ve seen or read Wilder’s four best-remembered work and I gotta say:

He’s terrific.

And, if you’re local, there’re three shows left.

Drunk crows, dystopian Jews,elderly werewolves, and brooding kaiju

.

Unquestionably my favorite book of this set was Chuck Palahniuk's memoir. Not something I would have guessed. Not because it was entertaining but because it is hands down one of the most useful books about writing I've ever read. It's a veritably bible of good ideas. Not kidding.

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089) The Art of Tony Millionaire by Tony Millionaire, finished October 4

This is a pretty packed collection from way back in 2009. And it captures well the dichomatic nature of his work. It's cute and lovely and delightful. It is awful and demented and repulsive.

It's quite the split.

But you always believe he is being honest. And I think that's why I like it even when I don't. 

a bit over twenty days 

☞

090) Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different by Chuck Palahniuk, finished October 16

I loved this book. This is a classic of the writing advice/memoir of which Steven King's On Writing is perhaps the most lauded entry. Palahniuk packs us full with genuinely useful things to consider alongside wild stories that end up mattering to the writing in unexpected ways. It's also a love letter to writers and editors and publicists and friends and family he has known and loved.

Frankly, this is excellent. I intend to return this library copy and buy my own copy. Little notes I wrote to myself thanks to Consider This have already appeared in my current WIP. I need one for my classroom if nothing else.

Highly recommended. 

two or three weeks 

☞

091) Superman: The Harvests of Youth by Sina Grace, finished October 18

This is fine. It's a message novel using Smallville as setting. Bits of it work well and other bits are pure afternoon-movie. The audience is definitely people who want to understand those sucked into online hate and not at all those who are. It lacks the interiority of a good novel while largely keeping away from the visual dazzle or action of a good superhero comic. Bit of an identity crisis, this book. But, you know, fine.

two or three days over two or three weeks 

☞ 

092) The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare, finished October 22

Shakespeare's always fun to read with a class. Never underestimate your students. And something dumb but so filled with provocative stuff to talk about like Merchant? Goldmine.

a couple weeks 

☞

093) The Third Temple by Yishai Sarid, translated by Yardenne Greenspan, finished October 23

The publisher's giddy promotional text includes this:

I am wary of hyperbolic language, so allow me to be as concrete as possible: as a reader, I see The Third Temple fitting squarely into the dystopian tradition of George Orwell's critique of fascism in Animal Farm; Ray Bradbury's fight against censorship in Fahrenheit 451; and Margaret Atwood's courageous denunciation of patriarchy in The Handmaid's Tale.

These lofty comparisons are a big part of why I wanted to read the book. And I feel bad saying it, but my experience makes that litany of excellence about the right description. Which is to say I don't see much original here. Placing the action in a near-future Jewish fascist-religious dictatorship is a new setting, to be sure. But it's mostly like Animal Farm in that lots of animals die gruesome death. It's take on censorship is much less Fahrenheit 451 than Nineteen Eighty-four but I suppose you can't mention Orwell twice. The Handmaid's Tale makes the most sense as this is a dystopia run by fundamentalists.

 The one truly original addition to the genre The Third Temple gives us is the introduction of supernatural elements. God is in this book. Angels. Wisdom. I wonder if in the original Hebrew the language allows us to wonder if this is all in the head of our solo point-of-view character, but in this translation, that's rarely an option. God is in this novel. So are angels. And Wisdom. Their introduction excites me but I'm not quite certain what I'm supposed to make of it. At times, it feels like it might be a satire of fundamentalists Jews in modern Israel, but at other times it feels quite sincere. Given Sarid's reputation in his home nation, again, I suspect there may be more happening between the Hebrew lines than survives the translation into English.

The ending scene appears modeled after either Tale of Two Cities or Nineteen Eight-four but thematically it falls short of either.

In the end I'm left mildly confused and distinctly unsatisfied, and uncertain whether that's because this is so culturally specific that I'm being left out or if, maybe, it isn't actually as good as Animal Farm or Fahrenheit or Handmaid. I dunno. What do you think? 

about a month 

☞

094) Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell and Faith Erin Hicks, finished October 25

Honestly, this might be the best thing I've read by either Rowell or Hicks. It's simple and straightforward and charming and in a genre of which I am famously pro (best friends who discover they are in love with each other). Plus: it's seasonal.

My only complaint is the character all look about ten years older than they're supposed to be, but according to the bonus materials that was intentional. Okay. 

one day 

☞

095) The Werewolf at Dusk and Other Stories by David Small, finished November 3

Small was once best known as one of the great contemporary illustrators, but nowadays he's best known as the author of Stitches. This is a collection of three stories—one original and two adaptations. The most immediately accessible is the first, the title story, an adaptation of a story by Lincoln Michel about an elderly werewolf. But all the stories are, in some way, about aging, about being old. The second story is his original, a surrealist piece in which a man's survival depends on whether or not the dream he is in is his own. The third is a story by Jean Ferry, a fable for our times. The story takes place in the days before Hitler's rise to power, when most well-thinking individuals knew better than to consider that little man, that clown, a threat to the political order. The story's protagonist can sense there is more danger than the others recognize, but he's not sure what that danger is and he's not willing to stick his neck out to do anything about it.

Together, the stories don't suggest anything happy. 

two noncontiguous days 

☞

096) Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi, finished November 6

I didn't intend to read this book. Although my previous experiences with Scalzi have been enjoyable, he's not, like, all that interesting. He's potato chips.

But I found myself locked out of the house with a copy of this book so I started it. And. Well. You can't eat just one chapter.

This is the most airy of the Scalzi books I've read, but he knows that too. In the postscript he talks about writing it in two months and compares it to a three-minute pop song. And that's a good metaphor. It's good dumb fun.

But the craft does still get on my nerves. One complaint I've felt before but is so egregious here is that all his characters sound the same. They all have the same wit, telling the same jokes and making the same asides. Even the bad guy, though he's supposed to be less than? Scalzi can't help himself. The same cleverness at the same level sneaks through. And one of the results is, a little past halfway when we are reminded that this novel has Real Stakes when several characters are killed, it doesn't matter. Because who cares? They were interchangeable with every other character.

THAT SAID.

I'm reminded of Alfred Hitchcock saying there was no reason to adapt The Brothers Karamazov to film because it was already perfect as a novel. The novels to adapt are the bad novels that have potential. Kaiji Preservation Society is a such a novel. Even without rewritten dialogue, good actors can bring the characters to life. The final action sequence would absolutely kill. And the subtle politics of the novel are what we need right now. This is the kaiju movie I want. It's the kaiju movie we need. I sure hope someone makes it. (And not a ten-episode series on Peacock.)

three weeks

 

 

 

Previous books of 2025
(and years more distant)

Fresh meat come to market

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I have a bunch of stuff in the pipeline, but two seem rather urgent to mention.

First, my story “Do Not Open Until Christmas” (originally published and still available in Carol of the Tales and Other Nightly Noels) will soon reappear as part of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts production The Christmasing Spirit: Advent Calendar of Latter-day Saint Literature. You should subscribe to receive this advent calendar of writings by Latter-day Saints (including dead luminaries like Nephi Anderson, Josephine Spencer, and Maurine Whipple; and living people I’ve pushed on you before including Barrett Burgin, James Goldberg, William Morris, Steven L. Peck, Luisa Perkins, Todd Robert Petersen, and Darlene Young) in your email.

Second, the debut of a new story, “Upon the Altar,” which just appeared in Breaking Through the Penumbra (Cicada Song Press) edited by Johanna Haas, Jessica Bradshaw, Jacqui Paul, and Jenny Graman.

In this story, a young sister missionary who, while giving blood for the first time, experiences a remarkable vision. This was a great team to work with (my editor was Jacqui Paul) and if you order RIGHT NOW you’ll nine dollars off the normal price. It ain’t, in other words, gonna be six-something forever.

Octobrrrrrrrrrfest

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Yes, three of these arguably should not be listed. But it's October, baby.

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ELSEWHERE
YouTube

The Two Gentlemen of Verona (2018) × 2

The adaptation the students voted for was waaaaaaay to quiet, so we watched their #2 instead. I think I'm glad. It's on Hofstra University's most-accurate Globe reproduction and it works hard to make the humor work. Julia's bit with the ripped-up letter was excellent physical comedy.

Speaking of physical comedy, the codpieces were . . . a bit much.

My main complaint is of the video production. It seems like they picked shots live as the play was happening and just never went back (maybe couldn't go back?) to reselect. Ofttimes the audience is laughing at something we know not what. Frustrating for us here in the video audience.

Giving Sylvia one of Valentine's lines at the end helped fix the ickiness of the ending. Leaning queer in the final moments didn't hurt either.

THEATER
The Roxie

Animation Mixtape (2025)

Exciting to have Don Hertzfeldt getting a nice set of animation into theaters again. I hope it becomes a regular thing.

Don only made little intro/outro animations with his popcorn guys mocking AI animation. Of the films he collected, I had only seen "The Flying Sailor" and "The Big Snit" before (both of which I quote like; I saw so much more detail in "Snit" than ever before by virtue of the big screen). I've reviewed the new-to-mes on Lettterboxd:

Martyr's Guidebook, Zoon Pineapple Calamari Wednesdays with Goddard [not on Letterboxd: "Selected Line Animations" by Bruce Bickford, presumably tests for his "Cas'l'"?] I Am Alone and My Head Is On Fire The Hill Farm Larry Jesus 2

(This is missing a couple that the guy I borrowed the list from on Letterboxd did not include: "Holy Cow" [which I can't find on Letterboxd] and maybe a couple others, but I can't read my notes. Sorry.)

HOME
Kanopy

The Bicycle Thieves (1948)

It's still very good but honestly rewatchability is not that high for me.

HOME
our dvd

Singin' in the Rain (1952)

No.

As a matter of fact, I do not think it will ever get old.

OME
Contra Costa Library dvd

Blindspotting (2018)

This is one of the best made movies of the last ten years AND it's one of the most explanatory. If you feel like you don't understand race in America, you could do a lot worse than watch Blindspotting.

It's also s'damn much fun.

I remember the first time, not knowing what would happen in that penultimate scene. I did not know. And that's what makes its final line so excellent.

THEATER
AMC Bay Street 16

Truth & Treason (2025)

This is an excellent theatrical experience. Some of the elements that I worry might seem weaker on second or third viewing (eg, the score) work perfectly on first viewing with an engaged audience. Some of the elements I think might work better on second or third viewing (eg, the speed of Helmut's conversion from casual Nazi to fullblown anti-Nazi propogandist) didn't really matter when you're all there with fellow people ready to book Nazis.

All that said, this is not a simple anti-Nazi propaganda piece. Characters traditionally cast as bad guys in his story (the branch president, the Gestapo) are treated with empathy. When you can end the movie not hating the guy you saw (spoiler alert) stick a knife under the hero's fingernails, the movie is not a dumb little bit of rahrahism.

Ewan Horrocks, who plays Helmuth, looks a bit like Tobey Maguire and a lot like Cillian Murphy and excels at the part. But the whole movie is cast well. And whatever money they had they spent well—the film looks terrific. We saw a preview for the new star-laden Nuremberg before and it didn't look any better than Truth & Treason.

Anyway, this is the hero we need right now. As the Navalny quote that appears at the end emphasizes it.

The great film in this genre may be A Hidden Life, but this is a worthy addition and something to take every teenager you know to. Let's give them someone to talk about.

HOME
Plex

Rashomon (1950)

Watching for the first time a movie with a massive reputation and about which I know kind of a lot but also not much at all always makes for a peculiar experience. I really loved the ending shot which was transcendent, but much of the film was deeply unpleasant. Perhaps intentionally so? The fourth take on the story put the pieces together in a sensibly human way, which I appreciated, but I was still left a bit unsteady.

In other words, a wiser man would immediately watch this again.

HOME
Hulu

Over the Garden Wall (2014)

Just beautiful. Taking early talkies cartoons and crossing them with Ghibli sensibilities and magic and heart. And the result is maybe my favorite cartoon of the last couple dozen decades. Anyway, it's the only one a try to pressure my family into watching yearly. It's just so good.

ELSEWHERE
Hoopla

Miami Connection (1988)

So you have a coke-dealing ninja biker gang attacking taekwondo rockband orphans. Lots of attempts to tie American colonial violence to modern life. An effort to create a Korean-American Jackie Chan. All set in beautiful Central Florida.

Lazy binaries like "good or bad" do not apply here. This movie was someone's dream and for all the outofsync sound and terrible acting and confused attitude toward violence, I think we can respect that dream. Thank you, Aisha Harris.

THEATER
Rialto Cinemas Cerrito

Frankenstein (2025)

☛Spoilers galore.☚

First of all, I loved it. I did. You have to understand: I've taught the novel probably over forty times. I love it. I admire it. There is yet to be a movie that even makes a real attempt to do what the novel does as the novel does. However, I'm not sure it's possible to do what the novel does as the novel does it. Movies and novels are different beasts for a reason. That said (looking at you Kenneth Branaugh), so long as you don't call your movie Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, I'm fine with that. Frankenstein belongs to us all and you can do whatever you want.

That said, in many ways, Guillermo del Toro's take is particularly literary and although it's nothing like the book it includes much from the book I can't ever remembering seeing before. Some language, for instance. And the nods to Percy Shelley and Lord Byron were nice fun as well.

But the movie also makes happy references to James Whale's Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, and at least the third sequel, Son of Frankenstein. He also slips in what I think were nods to Young Frankenstein and Branaugh's version (which I should admit I've never seen all the way through).

Anyway, this film (and I did see it on film!) offers a great take on the blind man, completely reinvents Elizabeth (in occasionally unclear but always interesting and quite wonderful ways) and William (in occasionally inconsistent, but always useful and appreciated ways), offers some new takes on Frankenstein's family.

But maybe my favorite thing—and this is the biggest spoiler of all, bigger than wolves (you'll see what I mean) or syphilis (you'll see what I mean)—del Toro gave Frankenstein a happy ending. And I loved it. I honestly loved it. That's what we always want when the novel ends, and del Toro gave it to us. I'm so glad.

And it had the weird side effect of turning this movie into a superhero origin story. And you know what? If del Toro wants to make that to, I'll be there. Why the heck not.

ELSEWHERE
our dvd

The Merchant of Venice (2004)

I had forgotten how many prostitute nipples are in this movie.

And am I the only one who doesn't understand Joseph Fiennes Movie Star? He's kinda funny looking, ain't he?

Overall, it does a pretty good job making the play work, but most of the Venetians just suck. Even with the film choosing to redeem Jessica a little (she didn't trade her mother's ring for a monkey!) and cutting waaaaay down on Gratiano's explosive antisemitism, really, none of the young poeple out of Venice seem at all worth knowing. They all suck.

In short, it makes the whole comedy much more dramatic in order to redeem its less savory elements. Largely, it does work, but I'm not sure the task is wholly accomplishable. Still. Well done.

HOME
our dvd

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Upsettingly it's been six years (!?!) since any of us last watched this movie. In large part because the baby reached the point of finding scary movies scary and she's only just now willing to watch it again. And I am delighted to join her. I love this movie so much. Honestly, I think it's my favorite romance from any musical. And visually it's just amazing. Henry Selick's best movie. Tim Burton's best movie. Danny Elfman's best movie. Catherine O'Hara's best movie.

I could go on, but you get the point. It's bloody terrific.

HOME/ELSEWHERE
our dvd

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)

This doesn't normally qualify for the list, but I've watched it four times in the last twenty-four hours and we'll have it running out our window all Halloween night, so I think I'm justified a few observations.

First, to the haters who dismiss it as low-budget animation, shut up. Because so what? Are you also complaining about the budget Keats had for "Ode on a Grecian Urn"? Just stop.

Because second, the limitations are part of what makes the best Charlie Brown animation so great. Even higher-budget offerings (eg The Peanuts Movie [2015] or Apple's new series, both of which are second-tier Peanuts animation, right up there with Thanksgiving and Easter) succeed in par by learning the lessons Bill Melendez learned from 1960s tv-budgets. For instance, the scene of Snoopy enjoying piano music goes one minute and forty-four seconds without so much as moving the camera (it's a little longer if you include the pan that follows Snoopy into position).

The color use is simple—not as daring or abstract as the dogfight scene or stuff in the original Christmas special or A Boy Named Charlie BrownA Boy Named Charlie Brown—but it has a similar effect. Then, although Schroeder's head occaionally moves and his fingers are busy, it's essentially a still frame. Snoopy is the only thing that moves. And so his movements have more importance than they would have in a busier frame. The same thing happens throughout as characters become still objects, directing our attention to what matters. And this works so well because the stuff that matters genuinely matters.

Plus, there are the gorgeous watercolor backgrounds and the sharp dialogue. Let me tell you: top-tier Peanuts holds up. The best of them are just as good as the strip. Which is high praise indeed.

Is math the worst? (and if it is, whose fault is it?)

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A student asked me on the AP Lit discord:

 hey mr jepson, do you think the study of literature has any of these problems?

.

I wrote kind of a lot (for discord) in response, so I thought I’d share it with a second audience:

Hoo. I have a LOT to say about this.

For one, when you’re in the academy, no matter your field, you’re reaching levels of specialization no one else has reached. That’s literally what’s meant by a PhD in the 21st century.

But as lonely as specialization can be, I suspect he’s right that it’s a bit worse in math.

But! It’s also true that that’s part of what attracts people to pure math in the first place. To think a thought no one has every thought before? That’s oxygen, baby.

HOWEVER, in the old days of pure math, you could theorize brilliant things and then the next generation(s) of students would make the proofs. That’s not how it works anymore.

Now the genius work and the grunt work have to be done by the same person.

Is that better or worse? I don’t know.

I also agree that a lot of math teaching is all about memorizing crap and not actually understanding math.

We’re trying to get you to pass tests, not to really truly do math.

He mentioned this but the name of measurements replacing the goal has a fun name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart’s_law

This drives me CRAZY in education. So much of what we do is stupid testing in order to give you grades and I hate it.

I wasn’t joking when I said that I’ve observed that the essais* do more to make you (my students) better writers than just about anything else I do. The only things that might do more is when I get to sit down wit someone at lunch and work one-on-one with them on their writing. Even then, you’ll learn more if we, say, go over your college-application essays than, say, your Two Gentlemen essays.

Most of the “school” stuff we do is not where you will do most of your learning.

But most English teachers get trapped in the same morass that math teachers do: teaching little tricks and techniques so we can test you and show you “learned” something rather than helping you find the joy or writing or mathing.

How terrible! The joy of the subject matter should be our main goal!

But how do I grade joy? Can’t do it. So 60% of our grade is stuff that thrown against some rubric the College Board tested over a decade and says is proof you’re smart.

Such a dumb system.

So, to get back to your question, @[asker], sadly, it is worse in math. But that because even with back English classes, there’s a better chance people will escape into adulthood with a love of story and sound than with a love of sum and superset.

Which is a tragedy because every single person should be able to enjoy the beauty and pleasure of a nice piece of math, same as they can with a nice piece of Robert Frost.

(If you’re one of the people who’s feels you can’t enjoy math, I think these books are a lovely reintroduction to what makes math fun and pretty. Ironic, given the state of the drawings. Here’s book one: https://bookshop.org/a/8076/9780316509046)

(Or at the library: https://ccclib.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S154C1765792)

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* essai — The essai (pronounced incorrectly) is an assignment I give almost every week. (We write every week but sometimes it’s an AP-style essay.) It’s inspired by Montaigne and his original concept of just trying stuff out. Writing without too much worry worry about what you’re doing. Here’s the assignment. Write for forty minutes without stopping. You do that, you get 100%. I give a prompt but you don’t have to follow it. But my prompts are so interesting you’re genuinely interested to discover what you’re going to write. Students are, on average, more proud of their essais than of anything else. And they write amazing things. They are easily the best reading I get to do as part of my job. Granted, these are advanced students on the cusp of adulthood but imagine how other students could do who haven’t been bullied into believing crap like the five-paragraph essay is “writing.”

A theological argument against A.I. as it now exists

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Substack tells me that my AI/tithing post is Thubstack’s most popular. As twice the other week I was approached by friends about it, I guess that must be true. People do not often approach me about the stuff I throw on the internet.

Anyway, the second fellow wanted to tell me that his corporate overloads are demanding that he and his colleagues figure out how to integrate AI into their jobs. But! so far! it’s only slowing them down and making their jobs harder. (This seems to be true for everyone in all fields—even for coders, the people AI can supposedly best assist.) By the way, this fellow doesn’t work for an AI company. So the bossmen have been paying money with the wild belief that, contrary to all evidence, AI will make them more money than they’re spending on it. Not likely, but the good news is: all that money may help one lucky AI company keep their lights on a little bit longer. I’m a big fan of charitable giving.

As for the first fellow who approached me, his career is deeply entwined with AI. It’s not an exaggeration to say that AI as currently constituted may not have happened without his genius. And he is a genius. Make no mistake. But, outside Victor Frankenstein (really, only outside the book version of Victor Frankenstein), creators are compelled defend the worthiness of their creations. And that’s what he wanted to do in response to my post.

Interestingly, in his email, he rhetorically equated AI with Mormonism. That is:

me : mormonism : : him : ai

Which feels telling in retrospect, even though his questions were all about where the artificial fits within a Mormon worldview—after all, is not all truth part of one great whole?—the assumption being, I think, that if it is all one great whole, then “artificial” becomes an artificial category. If God can work through human hands, why not through human tools? These are reasonable questions and made me feel I should get a bit more precise as to what I think the problems with AI are.

In my previous article, I argued that anything worth doing is worth doing oneself. Tools may assist a person in doing a thing, sure, but people seem attracted to AIs because they imagine they will allow them to avoid doing the thing. Which, I suppose, makes their argument simply that those things are not worth doing. Honestly, this is how I feel about much assigned schoolwork and probably lots of corporate work as well. But maybe the better solution is just do not do those things? Don’t make kids write a paper that’s boring! Boom!

Anyway, I’ve since found something the Church is using AI for that I find reasonable. If you go to FamilySearch now, on many of the deceaseds’ pages, you’ll find something like this:

It’s adequate and simple enough that it’s unlikely to get anything important wrong. Plus, it’s easy to replace with something you yourself have written should you be so inclined. I don’t know how much they’re spending on this (or how much the contracted AI company is losing regardless), but maybe this is worth doing? It seems reasonable, anyway, so long as it doesn’t prevent people in North Carolina from drinking water. It’s not really offering anything you couldn’t discover with another click or two and twenty seconds of reading, but okay.

Another “reasonable” use I saw at church recently was related to our ward’s upcoming 100-year anniversary. As part of that, we’re writing a history and someone on the committee inputted forty-years of ward newsletters into ChatGPT and let it write a couple chapters. These things were terribly written: filled with cliches, poor editorial decisions, factual errors, the sorts of repetitive writing seventh graders use to reach a pagecount, etc. But it was a start. Since then, members of the ward have put in…I would guess well over two hundred hours rewriting it (including research, deletions, additions, corrections, smoothings, and so on). It was helpful to have that awful beginning to get us started, but it did not save us time in the long run. It’s a current debate whether as to it was actually worth doing at all. Personally, I suspect we wouldn’t have met our deadline if we weren’t rewriting a draft that appalled us. Which is a fun irony as using AI also took us more total hours. Ha ha ha. Procrastination strikes again!

My friend (the first fellow) also brought up one of his favorite metaphors that he’s been using for over a decade now:

“Is a beaver dam artificial?”

I suppose that depends on how you define “artificial” which I am (obviously) avoiding, but I love the comparison of an LLM to a beaver dam because that comparison highlights exactly what is problematic about LLMs.

Which finally brings us adjacent to the promise of my title. So let’s pause our beaver-talk while I suggest a few examples of what’s so bad, theologically, with AIs. The most terrifying things that I’m witnessing include:

• The whole point of life on Earth from a Mormon point of view is to learn by exercising agency. What I witness pretty much every single time I hear “ChatGPT” in a sentence is someone surrendering their agency. They’ve surrendered an opportunity to think a thought or to create something new, then been impressed by (see next bullet point).

• LLMs are, necessarily, dedicated to the averagization of human culture. They’re pattern machines that model themselves after extant patterns. While you can throw tweaks into their behaviors, they work by matching what’s come before. That’s why they can only be as good as the data that is (stolen and) fed to them. It’s why they need the entire internet to sound smarter than one of Janelle Shane’s bots. It takes a great deal of people (and some fancy programming) to make AI sound smart. But even then, only when you don’t look closely. Or when you yourself (see next bullet point).

• AI products are accelerating the enshittification of civilization. You can find reasonable/angry people on YouTube ranting about this, but we all know it’s true. Deepfakes don’t make civilization better. Grok’s political opinions don’t increase the health of democracy. Salt substitutes aren’t making people healthier.

Another friend of mine recently wrote this:

…my primary belief [is] that human identity and consciousness consists of attention and intention.

Attention and Intention are at the core of almost every metaphysical practice. Religious ritual, magical practice, meditation, journaling, whatever you might have as “that thing that moves you beyond the basic existence of production and consumption.”...

The interplay of attention and intention is to me why the doomscrolling-algorithm practice is demonic and destructive. Forget the neurological aspect of it, it’s an active practice in de-soulment. You are turning off all intention. Doomscrolling is nihilistic in that it gives up all will and forfeits it to the ba’algorithm.

There is no attention to be paid here—because attention implies agency and doomscrolling is not something we (and I’m including myself here purposefully) actively choose....

There is no intention to be made here—because intention implies a purpose or something that is gained either at the end or through the medium of the activity. The end of a doomscrolling session is never because you have reached some level of satisfaction but because some other thing beckons you.

This is as simple and coherent an explanation as could be made. LLMs are designed to accelerate the ba’algorithm’s work. While pattern machines are already proving helpful at letting oncologists get through more images (good) and pick nonwhite people out of a crowd (not good), there are also some reasonable arguments for human interaction, for instance, AI’s potential to help the lonely, it may also accelerate our disenfranchisement with ourselves as lovers, as parents, as members of the entire human project. (I mean—it definitely will if there’s money in it. Capitalism isn’t built to care about the future.)

And this brings us back to beavers.

While its true that the Luddites hated machines that took away their ability to do a craft (although it was more complicated than that), ultimately most human-invented tools have ultimately provided more opportunities for thinking and enrichment; LLMs, as currently used, persuade us not to do such things. Or, rather, it allows people to pretend they’re thinking and creating when in fact they are not. It allows people to lie to themselves.

But what do beaver dams do? Well, they do more than just give beavers a place to raise baby beavers.

• Beaver ponds create wetlands which are among the most biologically productive ecosystems in the world, An entire food chain is created in a beaver pond. Beaver ponds become magnets for a rich variety of wildlife. From important game species like wood duck, mink and otter, to vulnerable anadromous fish like rainbow smelt, steelhead and salmon, biodiversity thrives due to beaver ponds. Beaver dams also protect downstream spawning areas from sedimentation, and create cool, deep pools which increase salmon and trout populations.

Let’s pause here for a moment to point out that what beaver dams are doing are increasing the potential for agency—they’re creating an ecosystem that allows duck and mink and otter and smelt and steelhead and salmon to do their thing. To have offspring after their kind. To have joy. But sorry for interrupting.

• When beavers and their dams are present, 160 percent more open water is available in times of drought.

• Beaver ponds act as a natural filter system, helping to improve water quality by trapping sediment and pollutants before they reach larger waterways. These wetlands store large amounts of carbon dioxide which helps to reduce global warming.

• Beavers regulate water flow, preventing sudden floods.

• Beaver ponds store groundwater.

• Beaver ponds reduce erosion and sedimentation that typically damage culverts, bridges, and stormwater systems.

• A lack of beavers results in increased intensity of drought and wildfires in the west as fires spread rapidly across parched landscapes.

In other words, beavers’ dams do a great deal of work, they do a great deal of good. In short, they are what AI boosters claim AI is / will be rather than what AI has proven to be so far. It’s an old joke (and gives the robots too much credit), but SMBC probably told it best:

(Nothing against plumbers.)

Look. Saying you have emails ChatGPT can write is admitting your job consists of emails that do not need to be written and do not need to be read. I’m not sure that’s how we should live our lives anyway. Perhaps—just perhaps—what these LLMs are revealing is that much of the world capitalism has built us is already contrary to a life well lived. Perhaps we are discovering that tasks we have called important are just glorified averaging. Perhaps we have spent hours and hours and hours engaged in tasks that never needed to be done.

Students who cheat, who use a machine rather than writing their own work? Perhaps that’s because their human instincts correctly recognized the assigned work wasn’t worth their time. (Or perhaps they’ve been fooled into believing it’s not worth doing which may be worse.) Teachers using AI to make assignments that are a waste of students’ time are committing a sin orders of magnitudes greater.

I go on accreditation teams to examine schools. The accreditation agency recognizes that much of what they have us do is a waste of time. How do I know this? Because they tell us to write our report by feeding the schools report into AI. Which implies they assume schools are using AI to make those reports and suggests they use AI to read our reports. If no human needs to be involved, it ain’t worth doing.

My teams so far have eschewed AI and we thus actually get to know the schools rather than simply appearing as if we do.

Of course, don’t take my word for it. Even OpenAI, which is constantly making absurdly optimistic predictions about AI, has said LLM hallucinations are a mathematical certainty. In other words, AI producing bad outcomes (lies?) is, according to OpenAI itself, a permanent state of affairs.

But it’s not just that LLMs are liars from the beginning. There’s also no question that some people absolutely and openly see LLMs as a means of controlling those who must be controlled. Which is all of us. Because billionaires are a rounding error.

(Had to give them a single pixel because otherwise they wouldn’t exist. Billionaires did not earn their pixel.)

It might seem I’ve gone far astray from my original promise to discuss the theological implications of AI. But I haven’t.

In a moment where Nvidia is trading chips for OpenAI stock, thus either bleeding OpenAI for whatever VC they have left or tying themselves to the ship about to sink in hopes that will prevent it from sinking—in a moment where our entire economy is “not in a recession” entirely thanks to spending on AI—in this moment, in other words, we need to reassert our humanity. Each of us needs to assert our humanity as individuals, and we need to assert belief in the actual true real imaginable humanity of everyone else as well.

Part of what AI salesmen try to tell us is that AI will increase human dignity. Instead of doing menial tasks, we’ll be free to accomplish great things. Each of us! Individually!

But instead, so far at least, they’ve offered soma. They’ve offered products that would remove our intention. They’ve offered products that would devour our attention. They‘ve offered products that would slowly remove our ability to create, our capacity to choose, our drive to be agents unto ourselves.

And as a Latter-day Saint?

Such is the purpose of life, baby. To create—to intentionally create and choose and become. To do what we can to allow others their dignity as they too create and choose and become. That’s why we’re here. That’s why God put us here. That’s what it’s all about.

That is my theology.

And even before we get to how this system is flooding more and more of our economy to fewer and fewer of our people, it’s why I can’t boost AI.

Prop 50: measuring morality in a time of immorality

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Since long before I told people to vote yes on Prop 11 and yes on Prop 20 and no on Prop 27, I’ve been an advocate of better and more fairly solving democracy’s eternal problem of politicians choosing their voters rather than voters choosing their politicians.

(I’d like to link to a famously good Washington Post article on gerrymandering [I did post the article’s image below] in case if you’re not up on the scuttlebutt, but my WaPo account expired today. I canceled a couple weeks ago because I had enough with billionaire manipulation of its editorial pages. Still a lot of good reporting happening there, but I decided my meager journalism budget should be spent elsewhere. I want to go local, but the San Francisco Chronicle, the best option, is significantly more expensive than what I’d been spending. Anyway. Instead I’ll link to this hour of radio that gives a solid example of how awful things can get.)

Anyway, given my history as an outspoken advocate for fairly drawn lines, you’d think I’d have a clear argument against Prop 50. If you haven’t been paying attention to the intersection of national and California politics, here’s the official description:

Hhhhhh.

So Texas’s legislature, under the direction of our pathetic would-be-dictator of a president, redistricted to let Texas send fewer Democrats to Congress in 2026 in hopes of avoiding the expected backlash against Republicans come midterms. It’s not the only Republican-run state doing this, but Texas is the biggest. And Texas had more Biden voters in 2024 than any other state in the nation (save one), so diluting the political power all those blue voters could make a huge difference nationally, when it comes to preserving a Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

But there’s that save one I mentioned above: California. The only state that also had more Trump voters than Texas. And, thus, California has the power to gerrymander its Republicans with every degree of antidemocratic harshness that Texas is doing to its Democrats.

(Were every state to do this to the fullest extent, the Democrats would likely win the battle of the cheaters, as Democratic-run states have the largest population. Repubs would hold onto their nobody-lives-there advantage baked into the Constitution [as currently written], but it would be an ugly and stupid fight regardless, one that no one could win.)

But unlike Texas, California legislators do not have the power to play dirty without the permission of voters. Which is why we got a flier this week featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger pleading with us to vote no by reminding us of a well established truth: two wrongs do not make a right.

I agree.

Yet, Prop 50 would expire in 2030, after which we’d go back to our nonpartisan line-drawing committee.

In the meantime, perhaps we Californios could heroically prevent an unmoored Republican Party from tossing a quarter-millennium of gradual democratic improvement into the ash heap of history. In other words, two wrongs, even if they don’t make a right, at least may not allow the first wrong to win the day unchallenged.

Since I last wrote about this topic, a lot of math has gone into improving the problem of proper line-drawing (not that the Supreme Court cares). With some real work, we could make things better. (Let me link to this again.) But right now, we have a minority party led by a maniac deadset on destroying what makes America great. And the opposition party is floundering in foolishness—or at least they certainly look foolish.

We need healthy parties that engage in an intentional way. I’m not sure how we fix this. Maximizing partisan gerrymandering is clearly a stop-the-bleeding sort of fix (at best) and not a legitimate attempt at healing America.

So. Should Californians vote for Prop 50?

I honestly, genuinely do not know.

I’ve been intending to write this essay for a while, but I was hoping I would figure out the answer first. Voting has now begun and I still do not know. Let’s reason together, shall we?

● The Republican Party is engaging in dirty politics, including gerrymandering at a national level. Democrats doing the same where they can does get us closer to a proper distribution of representation throughout the nation as a whole.

● Just because the other guys are engaging in immoral actions does not justify the normalization of immorality. An eye for an eye was done away with by higher law long ago. The only path toward righteousness is righteousness, and we cannot let evil persuade us to sacrifice our moral standards in the fight against evil. That will only accelerate evil’s spread, and acceleration of evil will never bring greatness to a nation.

● This is a crisis moment. With one party actively engaged in dismantling the rule of law, siccing armed mercenaries upon American citizens, discarding legal precedent, etc etc etc, all while controlling all three branches of government? Whatever hailmary can be thrown is surely worth throwing.

● While Prop 50 is set to expire in 2030, there will always be another crisis. If we become accustomed to compromising moral standards for short-term victories, those standards will gradually dissolve until we do not stand for anything.

● While this temporary change will help approximate a proper balance between parties at the national level, many Californians will, at their local level, have their voices diluted. The influx of Democratic representation at the expense of Republican voters will—even if for only five years—disenfranchise many Californians in exactly the same way Democrats are accusing the other side of. Again, two wrongs are two wrongs.

● Although hyperbole is everywhere, nothing in my lifetime matches the damage to the American experiment being inflicted by Trump and his cronies. It’s when things are most dangerous that the heaviest tools must be employed.

● Hyperbole is right. Although the president and attorney general and many of the loudest Republicans may broadcast an intense disinterest in the rule of law, most Americans on both sides of the divide believe in America. They doubt the good intentions of the other side, sure, but they still believe in Constitutional rule themselves. Like Indiana Jones, maybe we just need a little faith to take the step to give the other side a chance.

● Are you kidding? Are you following the news out of Texas?

● So we should just vote to break the democratic system we’re so proud of out of . . . revenge?

● No. To save it.

We could just say that excuses are the last resort of the guilty and take the high road. Or we could embrace the exceptionalism of this moment and fight gerrymandering with gerrymandering. Both are compelling arguments.

I had assumed that writing this post would solve the mystery of how to vote. I’m disappointed that is not yet true.

I think I have decided that a NO vote is the morally correct option. But just as World War II was a good war, maybe this is when we (metaphorically! metaphorically!) pick up our muskets and go to war? I don’t know.

I wish I could read the future.

How are you voting / would you vote were you in California?

Please explain your answer. I want to understand.