I regret to inform you that Ask Jeeves is dead. The site closed yesterday. Web 1.0 lost another founder.
Ask Jeeves: 3 June 1996 - 1 May 2026. Send no memes.
Evelyn Waugh on Ash Wednesday in New Orleans, written for LIFE magazine:
"….There is witchcraft in New Orleans, as there was at the court of Mme. de Montespan. Yet it was there that I saw one of the most moving sights of my tour. Ash Wednesday; warm rain falling in streets unsightly with the draggled survivals of carnival.
The Roosevelt Hotel overflowing with crapulous tourists planning their return journeys. How many of them knew anything about Lent?
But across the way the Jesuit Church was teeming with life all day long; a continuous, dense crowd of all colors and conditions moving up to the altar rails and returning with their foreheads signed with ash. And the old grim message was being repeated over each penitent: ‘Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return.’ One grows parched for that straight style of speech in the desert of modern euphemisms…"
Love seeing @stewartbrand in the @NewYorker, writing about three of the books that informed MAINTENANCE.
New to me: THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT by Arthur Herman, about Scotland’s particular contributions to the modern world: https://t.co/kZyFf95EJ9
I’m not pissed that the NYT called Stoppard undereducated. I don’t actually care about that. I’m offended by the implication that reading books isn’t education itself. The attempt to divorce reading and education is why students think they’re now just in school for career prep.
Harvard reports that it is “failing to perform the key functions of grading.”
Its grading practices are “damaging the academic culture of the College.”
“Faculty newly arrived at Harvard are surprised at how leniently our courses are graded.”
Students say academics feel “fake.”
Did you know, the new @MacEwanU Griffins logo was created by a @GriffinsMHKY alum?
Curtis Ogrodiuk (2003-06) and his renowned local company Artslinger - with help from his students at @LOHS_Legends - is behind the new design.
#GriffNation
STORY➡️https://t.co/TWYhd3ptl7
Embarrassing behaviour by the Edmonton Jubilee Auditorium audience at Tina last night.
- At least 4 phones went off.
- People feeling entitled to yell at Ike’s character during a dramatic scene.
It is just so utterly disrespectful. Learn how to behave in a theatre.