Glad to see my colleague in disability/design @pauldefazio here on Micro! Do please welcome him.

A student-built ice cathedral at Notre Dame.

My PhD student is being advised left and right to let Claude do her lit review, write her qualifying presentation, summarize the books she needs to read to prepare. She is holding fast to the conviction that this slow, frictionful work is the work she signed on for. Immensely proud of her.

My son Malcolm (15) and I are on our fourth watch-through of Band of Brothers — a winter tradition. I think I’ve seen it twice more before that, so I’m officially versed in the 101st airborne. Other fans here?

Hundreds of tasks to go and still more snow coming down, but we’re in to our new place! It’s very quiet here.

A shot of our living room with furniture, records, artwork strewn about.

here we go

A bunch of moving boxes by a wall in our old apartment, ready to head out

I have plenty of complaints about the UI of Substack, but there is a burgeoning network of professors there sharing principled and ingenious pedagogy for the age of LLMs.

Current status: moving week, new apartment! We’re having to get snow removal just to fit the truck out front, but such is the process.

Our bare living room and dining room, gleaming white walls and wood floors.

You guyssss Bruce Herman’s latest work.

Three photos of the tortured fleshy figures chased by skeletons in Bruce's latest paintings.

I’ve been in San Francisco for a few days enjoying a break from winter, but this polar bear is living her best life.

Our Great Pyrenees, Agnes, stands white and fuzzy in a snowstorm.

Currently half-nursing along an idea for a book—intellectual memoir, I guess?—called After Sustained Reflection, I Changed My Mind.

Coming your way soon if you’re a Comment subscriber!

The cover of the spring issue of *Comment* has Christian Smith on sociology, L.M. Sacasas on AI, and me on pattern recognition (design and architecture).

A great salve to trudge through the tundra yesterday for the 5 pm mass.

In a blizzard, the entrance of a church welcomes with its warm light.

The soup kitchen at my church has an ongoing Amazon wishlist of clothing items for guests. Deep winter is a good time to re-up it, if you’re looking to help.

It’s so good to see George Scialabba really read Christopher Lasch and understand his neither-right-nor-left critique of modernity. Lasch “insisted on the fact of human scale.”

Our daughter’s boyfriend 3D printed her a paintbrush holder. Romance!

On our daughter's desk, two white plastic paintbrush holders sit with arrayed brushes, like fingers of a hand, standing neatly inside.

On prevention design.

One day I really will write about how going to Wheaton College — where dancing and drinking and sex and drugs were verboten — was an absolute riot of creativity among my friends. We just unearthed these tapes, just some of the many bands and solo acts who wrote and recorded original music.

“In such situations, I have to learn the meaning of simply standing by.” On an ethics of life and accompaniment at a Vienna hospital, in Plough. Thanks to @isaacgreene for the link.