Shau

Artist and Wordsmith. Shau (Kevin O’Shaughnessy)

[Shau @Shau2026]

“In a democratic system, politicians are nothing more than the condensation of imbecility.”

-Nicolás Gómez Dávila

[Shau @Shau2026]

Currently re-reading: The Authentic Reactionary by Nicolás Gómez Dávila. I HIGHLY recommend this book!!

[A Time to Keep @no_grave_]

Home is made by little details

[The City Mentor @TheCityMentor]

Yet another city in Poland with stunning (reconstructed) historic architecture

[Joshua D Phillips @JoshPhillipsPhD]

Read Douglass "A Plea for Free Speech." It covers one of my fav concepts: Prohibiting free speech is "double-wrong." The speaker has a right to speak & the listener has a right to hear

It's infantilizing to tell adults they can't listen (read, view) materials you find offensive

[Liza Libes @pensandpoison]

Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy’s “uninspired, unedited passages” (??) are still a thousand times stronger than Joyce Carol Oates’ soporific 67th drafts.

(I did not want to make an enemy of Joyce Carol Oates, but her unprompted attack on Fyodor and Leo left me no choice.)

[Jeffery Tyler Syck @tylersyck]

Monticello (1809 final reconstruction):

[Wrath Of Gnon @wrathofgnon]

If your only source of information is official news media you know less about reality than someone who never watched the evening news in their lives. Not everything on X is correct but at least here you have stand a fighting chance of catching glimpses of the truth.

[Shau @Shau2026]

“Your daily life is your temple and your religion.”

-Kahlil Gibran

[Shau @Shau2026]

“These days, personal taste has suffered a decline. Colors have become garish, flimsy shapes, and hideous designs. It is only natural that surrounded by such objects, our sense of beauty should be dulled.”

-Yanagi Sōetsu

[Shau @Shau2026]

Use the techniques, perspectives, and insights of the greats to expand your toolbox but then craft your own perspective based on your experience.

Oh, and don’t make yourself subservient to notifications and updates on your devices! Airplane mode can be your best friend.

[Shau @Shau2026]

Art is something that you do, not something to be merely studied in books.

Philosophy - good philosophy- is extracted from the way you live your life, not the articulation of verbal formulas.

[Shau @Shau2026]

“So briefly rests the dew upon the bush clover—even now it scatters in the wind.”

-Lady Murasaki’s final poem on her death bed in the ‘Tale of Genji

[Liza Libes @pensandpoison]

Large companies have largely moved out of Chicago, meaning that there are no good jobs to attract the most talented members of our society.

I've lived in Chicago for a few years now, and virtually everyone works 9 to 5 back office jobs in HR or insurance. There are a few pockets of high-power finance talent, sure, but for the most part, the city lacks the sort of motivated, ambitious people I'd always used to meet in New York, so no one is going out of their way to do anything special.

Culture is typically an outgrowth of ambition and creativity. People who work "normie" jobs where the goal is to earn a paycheck and leave typically aren't spending their weekends making great art or organizing social events.

Chicago died about a decade ago, and unless it sees an influx of smart, ambitious people in the near future, it probably won't recover.

[Liza Libes @pensandpoison]

Classic literature survived the test of time. Contemporary “literature” will not.

How do I know this for certain? Because beauty has a much longer shelf life than politics.

[Shau @Shau2026]

@heyshrutimishra Just deleted Claude. Never using it again.

[Patrick J. Wolf @PatWolf]

Buy old books
Save old books

[𝙲𝚑𝚒𝚌𝚘𝚛𝚢 @steppedenizen]

One of my more contentious opinions is that Historic Preservation Commissions are generally a bad thing for a city.

They implement rules that nod to pastiche, not historicity, and largely act to serve private interests by creating artificial scarcity in real estate supply.

[Samuel Hughes @SCP_Hughes]

The old city of Gdansk was largely destroyed in the Second World War (as you can see in the fourth image here), but it was subsequently rebuilt.

Tall, slender terraced houses; no setbacks; lime trees; cars as guests; stone setted paving; discreet signage. The great church is in the characteristic 'brick Gothic' of the Baltic, but the vernacular architecture is what Central Europeans call 'baroque', with stuccoed facades and cheerful gables crowning rows of tall white casement windows.

The reconstruction was far from exact – buildings in backyards were replaced with gardens, and some of the craftmanship was simplified. But it was executed to a very high standard, and does not have the slightly bleak quality of, say, reconstructed Nuremberg.