Bob Schwartz

October 5, 2026

Nuns getting arrested at a U.S. Capitol protest gives us hope (2019)

Reviewing this post from 2019, I thought that I hadn’t seen many if any nuns or any other religious arrested for protesting at the U.S. Capitol lately. Is it because they are not protesting, or because they find protests have been futile, or because this Trump administration has evolved into a more tolerant and even faithful keeper of the peace? Something to think about.

It is good news that at least two insurgent candidates for the U.S. Senate (which meets at the Capitol) are grounding their campaigns in faithful ethos: James Talarico, a Christian seminarian in Texas, and Adam Hamilton, a respected and influential United Methodist minister in Kansas. Both states are known these days as Republican strongholds, but both states are home to citizens who would like to stop their own suffering, and who might also be beginning to think that a little more Christian morality, that is, humane morality, might not be a bad change in our government policies. You know, role models for our kids.

In the original post you will find links to Faith in Public Life and Faith in Action. Faith in Public Life will be ending its programming at the end of October due to lack of funding. Faith in Action is still operating. These represent two of many initiatives in which faithful people are driven not to gain followers to their particular religions but to seek justice and love mercy for everybody.

In recent decades, clergy and related religious were literally at the front lines of the civil rights and Vietnam War movements, along with other movements promoting—demanding—social justice, morality and peace.

Seeing the protest pictured above and described below, it seems that the same faithful forces are standing up and speaking out in the face of the very high-level and public devolution of basic moral and ethical principles (such as truth telling and all the other commandments and recommended conduct).

Hope.

Religion News Service:

Capitol Police arrest dozens of Roman Catholic protestors at the U.S. Capitol on July 18, 2019.

Nuns, other Catholics arrested protesting treatment of immigrant children

WASHINGTON (RNS) — Police arrested dozens of protestors, including many Roman Catholic nuns, at a rally Thursday (July 18) opposing the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrant children along the Southern border, treatment that organizers of the demonstration said amounted to atrocities.

Officials with the advocacy groups Faith in Public Life and Faith in Action faithinaction.org reported that 70 people were arrested after hundreds of demonstrators who had gathered on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol to sing hymns and wave signs with slogans such as “Everyone is sacred” and “Honor the Children: End child detention” crossed the street to enter the Russell Senate Office Building’s rotunda.

Some of the demonstrators stopped to lie down on the rotunda floor in the shape of a cross. They chanted the Hail Mary prayer several times while holding images of what organizers said were immigrant children who have died in U.S. custody.

Capitol police eventually began arresting demonstrators, among them Jesuit brothers and nuns from orders such as the Sisters of Mercy. The group recited the Lord’s Prayer as members were led away to buses waiting outside, leaving images of children scattered across the rotunda floor.

As officers escorted the handcuffed demonstrators into the buses, observers on the sidewalk burst into applause.

About Faith in Public Life:

Faith in Public Life is a national network of nearly 50,000 clergy and faith leaders united in the prophetic pursuit of justice and the common good. Faith in Public Life has played an important role in changing the narrative about the role of faith in politics, winning major progressive policy victories, and empowering new religious leaders to fight for social justice and the common good. Our media expertise, rapid-response capabilities and strategic campaign development have made us respected commentators in the media and valued partners with a range of religious groups working for economic and social justice.

About Faith in Action:

The struggle over the direction of the country is not just about economics or politics. It is a spiritual struggle over who we are and how we are connected. Many people, especially younger people, have lost faith in institutions and have distanced themselves from traditional religious congregations. But people are still searching for spiritual connection and purpose. Through our organizing work, we believe individuals will be able to say “as a result of my participation in Faith in Action, my life is better and I see the world and myself differently.”

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October 4, 2026

Ordinary religion: Nothing special

Religious traditions tend to grow into specialness or spectacle. It is a combination of leaders wanting it that way, believing that it helps expand the following, and followers who want and appreciate it. If it is special then they too are special. Every tradition is susceptible to going and growing this way.

Religion at its heart is ordinary. Every tradition has had those who question and reject the extraordinary and the special. It is simple, they say, though years, decades, centuries of add-ons have embellished and sometimes hidden that. It’s like a spring of refreshing and clean water around which a huge and complex and even polluting bottling plant has been built.

If you are a leader or follower, consider the original simplicity of your tradition. You may find that the ordinary is at its heart. “We are special” or “We are spectacular” or “We are better and above others” is not what the originators knew and had in mind.

Believe in the ordinary. Believe in nothing special.

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October 3, 2026

Walt Whitman

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

It is hard to love America if you don’t love Walt Whitman. It is hard to love poetry if you don’t. It is hard to love American poetry if you don’t.

If you find people among America’s least enlightened leaders and talkers who don’t love him, or attack him, maybe because of his unbridled exuberance for people and sexuality and life and freedom and America and Americans, and all the inherent unresolved contradictions and challenges, you may question their understanding and love of America (which you might already).

We would still be America without Walt Whitman. But we would be missing our most perfect and poetic narrator.

From Song of Myself (1892 version)

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the stuff that is fine,
One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the largest the same,
A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant and hospitable down by the Oconee I live,
A Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth,
A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin leggings, a Louisianian or Georgian,
A boatman over lakes or bays or along coasts, a Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye;
At home on Kanadian snow-shoes or up in the bush, or with fishermen off Newfoundland,
At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest and tacking,
At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine, or the Texan ranch,
Comrade of Californians, comrade of free North-Westerners, (loving their big proportions,)
Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen, comrade of all who shake hands and welcome to drink and meat,
A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest,
A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons,
Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion,
A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker,
Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.

I resist any thing better than my own diversity,
Breathe the air but leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place,
The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their place,
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.)

The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them,
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.

Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

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October 2, 2026

Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

“Humpty dumpty” was eighteenth-century slang for a short and clumsy person. (Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English)

Through the Looking Glass (Alice in Wonderland), Chapter 6

However, the egg only got larger and larger, and more and more human: when she had come within a few yards of it, she saw that it had eyes and a nose and mouth; and when she had come close to it, she saw clearly that it was Humpty Dumpty himself….

‘And how exactly like an egg he is!’ she said aloud, standing with her hands ready to catch him, for she was every moment expecting him to fall.

‘It’s very provoking,’ Humpty Dumpty said after a long silence, looking away from Alice as he spoke, ‘to be called an egg — very!’

‘I said you looked like an egg, Sir,’ Alice gently explained. ‘And some eggs are very pretty, you know’ she added, hoping to turn her remark into a sort of a compliment.

‘Some people,’ said Humpty Dumpty, looking away from her as usual, ‘have no more sense than a baby!’…

‘What a beautiful belt you’ve got on!’ Alice suddenly remarked.

(They had had quite enough of the subject of age, she thought: and if they really were to take turns in choosing subjects, it was her turn now.) ‘At least,’ she corrected herself on second thoughts, ‘a beautiful cravat, I should have said — no, a belt, I mean — I beg your pardon!’ she added in dismay, for Humpty Dumpty looked thoroughly offended, and she began to wish she hadn’t chosen that subject. ‘If I only knew,’ the thought to herself, ‘which was neck and which was waist!’

Evidently Humpty Dumpty was very angry, though he said nothing for a minute or two. When he did speak again, it was in a deep growl.

‘It is a — most — provoking — thing,’ he said at last, ‘when a person doesn’t know a cravat from a belt!’

‘I know it’s very ignorant of me,’ Alice said, in so humble a tone that Humpty Dumpty relented.

‘It’s a cravat, child, and a beautiful one, as you say….

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’

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October 2, 2026

AI Writes: Talk to Transformer (2019)

The post below is from 2019. We now know it as a rudimentary time for AI. Some company called OpenAI had just introduced GPT-2. “It’s impossible to know whether you’ve explored the limits of what it can do.”

What kind of tricks could AI perform back then? As you will see, the trick James Vincent at The Verge asked for was rewriting some of the most famous opening paragraphs in literature, prompted by the actual opening line.

As I’ve repeatedly noted in reviewing old posts, the years between then and now have thrown a number of big surprises at us. AI has gone beyond cute tricks to theoretical apocalypse.

The attempts to improve on Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, James Joyce, etc., were clunky and weird. If this is tried again seven years later, I expect the results would be more refined. Though in a different way, still weird.

So it goes.

James Vincent at The Verge:

Even the most advanced chatbots can’t hold a decent conversation, but AI systems are definitely getting better at generating the written word. A new web app provides ample proof, letting anyone enter a text prompt to which AI software will automatically respond.

Enter the start of a made-up news article, and it’ll finish it for you. Ask it a question (by formatting your input like this: “Q: What should I do today?”), and it’ll happily respond.

The site is called TalkToTransformer.com, and it’s the creation of Canadian engineer Adam King. King made the site, but the underlying technology comes from research lab OpenAI. Earlier this year, OpenAI unveiled its new AI language system, GPT-2, and TalkToTransformer is a slimmed-down, accessible version of that same technology, which has been made accessible only to select scientists and journalists in the past. (The name “transformer” refers to the type of neural network used by GPT-2 and other systems.)

If you want to learn about AI language generation, there’s no better way to understand its huge potential and serious limitations than by playing around with TalkToTransformer.

On the plus side, the model is incredibly flexible. It’s able to recognize a huge variety of inputs, from news articles and stories to song lyrics, poems, recipes, code, and HTML. It can even identify familiar characters from franchises like Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings.

At the same time, you’ll soon see that, at a fundamental level, the system doesn’t understand language or the world at large. The text it generates has surface-level coherence but no long-term structure. When it writes stories, for example, characters appear and disappear at random, with no consistency in their needs or actions. When it generates dialogue, conversations drift aimlessly from topic to topic. If it gets more than a few responses, it seems like good luck, not skill.

Still, as The Verge explained in our original coverage of GPT-2, this system is hugely impressive. Remember: this is a single algorithm that has learned to generate text by studying a huge dataset scraped from the web and other sources. It learned by looking for patterns in this information, and the result is a surprisingly multitalented system.

It may not be hard to find gaps in GPT-2’s knowledge, but it’s impossible to know whether you’ve explored the limits of what it can do.

Putting Talk to Transformer to the test, I prompted it with some of the most famous opening lines from classic novels (shown in bold). Note that for the sake of space, I have not included the actual opening paragraphs for comparison, author v. machine. If you’re not familiar with the real thing, you can easily look it up.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. But no one would speak of him as a beggar. He has nothing that may entitle him to such a wife; and therefore it lies open to him, as to a man of ill estate, and who does not have any means, that he might marry his daughter, to whom his fortune might furnish a dowry—a woman who bore his child. So that, in other respects, the poor man is so fortunate in life as almost to be the chief benefactor of his country, without the necessity of making a comparison of his wealth with his want of property. But he has no reason to make such an comparison. For without it his property may grow to become much greater than the property of the richest in the family, whom it is not fit to receive any assistance from. So that no one will be willing, by any means, to enter into a marriage-contract with any one who is rich enough to support him. But if the property of any one whom he is bound to support can be reduced to…

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

It is possible that the old prophets who would write in our days, the last of them we are not able to remember, would go mad during the coming of the Age of Light, but only among us, for now all is still the same to them.

The world, or at least that part of the world, which is not dominated by the forces of light and sound, becomes a desert of blind blindness, which has its origin in the lack of knowledge in the human brain. The old prophets said that all of us who have knowledge of God must, sooner or later, fall into an abject state of ignorance about the reality of Things. However, those who are the more ignorant, have never the slightest fear of the Age of Light, as there is…

James Joyce, Ulysses:

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. He had a large brown dog with blue eyes in his mouth, about twelve feet long.

“We are in the presence of the gods,” he said with a tone like a dog barking. As I walked inside, I glanced through the mirror which had the words “THE GODS” stamped upon it . I recognized the face that stood behind the mirror and the voice of the god. The god, whose name was Ouroboros, the One who is above and beyond, asked him if it was his name. The dwarf replied that his name was “Buck”. The god asked Buck Mulligan how he liked to be called. Buck answered, “Well, in order to be called what we are, we must be named. I like it when you call me that way.” The god had been talking about the god with his eyes shining and he felt something in his chest.
“I need a shave,” said Buck,…

Albert Camus, The Stranger:

Mother died today. I’m sure she has a daughter too. I’ve been trying to get her to talk to me for years. I tried to give her a name, to remind her what her life was worth, to show a smile to tell her I love her and that she is special. But, I couldn’t talk to her much. She just was. I’m not sure even if I could talk to her on the phone that would be enough to help her out. Not a real good idea because, the moment she does meet someone, she will feel abandoned and so will almost any adult. The last time I talked to her was before she passed away. She was sick. I saw her one last time in one of her many hospitals in the hospital. She didn’t talk very often. She seemed okay, at least when I had her. She told me she was sorry she didn’t talk to me sooner. I asked her about her kids, she said she was not home for the kids…

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit:

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. If the hobbit was happy, it was also easy to look upon him. Why, that hobbit could do whatever he liked, and so he came often and went noisily and noisily of one to another to meet his needs, but the poor hobbit felt nothing and never had anything to feel for. How can a hobbit feel for someone else? It is hard for him to have the confidence that someone else would feel for him.

Then when the hobbit is very tired and doesn’t know what to do, how he feels for somebody is also not easy to come in contact with him if he is far from civilization; there is so little contact with a non-European. The one time the hobbit fell very sick he looked back in vain for all his friends and nobody would tell…

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October 1, 2026

Democrats are looking for a phenom. They may have found one—if they can handle it. (2019)

This post is from April 2019. Who could have foreseen what would happen in America and the world over the following seven years? Not me.

Pete did not win the 2020 Democratic nomination, despite some remarkable finishes in the primaries. During this critical 2026 midterm campaign, he has come back as still smart, sensible and charismatic–a bit older, with beard–a popular supporter and fundraiser for a number of Democratic candidates. Will he be running for the presidential nomination in 2028? Will he win the nomination? Will he win the presidency?

Some of us believe that America would be in great hands with Pete as president, even more than we believed it in 2020.

“Phenom” is a fascinating English word. It was first used in 1890, to describe an inordinately talented young baseball player on a trajectory to be a superstar. Short for “phenomenon,” it has mostly passed out of usage, but remains an excellent descriptor.

Democrats have had recent experience with a presidential phenom. Obama was just 43 when he started to go supernova at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. A few years later, his talent and person would take him, against all odds and history, to the presidency, and also against all odds and opposition, keep him there for two terms.

In baseball and elsewhere, everybody knows what can happen with phenoms. Some shine and succeed beyond imagining. Some burn out and never make it past their first season.

Democrats would love to find and run another phenom, but are justifiably skittish about losing a precious, one-time-only opportunity to preserve American democracy. They are ambivalent about a phenom like Pete Buttigieg. He has all the right stuff—young, brilliant, accessible, charismatic, articulate, war veteran, Rhodes Scholar, speaks six languages, plays piano at a symphony level, etc. But will the American people elect a married gay man as president?

If the Democrats were confident the answer was “Yes,” we might be at the early stages of another phenomenon. If they are unsure or have already decided the answer is “no,” then we are in uncharted soul-searching territory. But in politics 2019, uncharted soul-searching territory is the name of the game.

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September 30, 2026

Does Trump believe nations should self-regulate their nuclear weapons? He believes it for AI companies.

Trump is promoting the policy that AI companies are capable of self-regulation and that they don’t need any broader guardrails or oversight from outside.

In the same vein, why not eliminate all multinational treaties on nuclear weapons? Why not allow each nuclear nation to regulate itself?

This talk of uncontrolled nuclear (or AI) apocalypse brings to mind Randy Newman’s Political Science (1972) which sounds ripped from the headlines:

No one likes us, I don’t know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
And all around, even our old friends put us down
Let’s drop the big one and see what happens

We give them money, but are they grateful?
No, they’re spiteful and they’re hateful
They don’t respect us, so let’s surprise them
We’ll drop the big one and pulverize them

Asia’s crowded, Europe’s too old
Africa is far too hot and Canada’s too cold
And South America stole our name
Let’s drop the big one, there’ll be no one left to blame us

We’ll save Australia
Don’t wanna hurt no kangaroo
We’ll build an all-American amusement park there
They got surfing too

Boom goes London, boom Paris
More room for you and more room for me
And every city the whole world ’round
Will just be another American town

Oh, how peaceful it’ll be
We’ll set everybody free

You wear a Japanese kimono, babe
There’ll be Italian shoes for me
They all hate us anyhow
So let’s drop the big one now

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September 30, 2026

Emergency Powers and The Rise

“Put even more simply, the German Parliament would be requested to turn over its constitutional functions to Hitler and take a long vacation.”
—William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Williams L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich remains the single most readable one-volume history of Nazi Germany. If you like history, but don’t think the story is relevant today, it is still a good read. If you think it might have some relevance, it is essential.

Hitler came to power without ever winning the presidency (he came in second in 1932) and without the Nazis ever having a majority in parliament. Yet in 1933, the Nazis were in control, all civil rights were abrogated, and Hitler would remain until 1945 dictator of one of history’s most infamous, oppressive and deadly regimes.

On February 27, 1933, the Reichstag, home of German parliament, was burned down. It was blamed on Communists, but it was actually the work of the Nazis. The Reichstag fire was an excuse to seize absolute power. Shirer writes:

On the day following the fire, February 28, he [Hitler] prevailed on President Hindenburg to sign a decree “for the Protection of the People and the State” suspending the seven sections of the constitution which guaranteed individual and civil liberties. Described as a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state,” the decree laid down that:

“Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”

In addition, the decree authorized the Reich government to take over complete power in the federal states when necessary and imposed the death sentence for a number of crimes, including “serious disturbances of the peace” by armed persons….

With all the resources of the national and Prussian governments at their disposal and with plenty of money from big business in their coffers, the Nazis carried on an election propaganda such as Germany had never seen before. For the first time the State-run radio carried the voices of Hitler, Goering and Goebbels to every corner of the land. The streets, bedecked with swastika flags, echoed to the tramp of the storm troopers. There were mass rallies, torchlight parades, the din of loudspeakers in the squares. The billboards were plastered with flamboyant Nazi posters and at night bonfires lit up the hills. The electorate was in turn cajoled with promises of a German paradise, intimidated by the brown terror in the streets and frightened by “revelations” about the Communist “revolution.” The day after the Reichstag fire the Prussian government issued a long statement declaring that it had found Communist “documents” proving:

Government buildings, museums, mansions and essential plants were to be burned down… Women and children were to be sent in front of terrorist groups… The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war… It has been ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.

Publication of the “documents proving the Communist conspiracy” was promised, but never made. The fact, however, that the Prussian government itself vouched for their authenticity impressed many Germans….

On March 5, 1933, the day of the last democratic elections they were to know during Hitler’s life, they spoke with their ballots. Despite all the terror and intimidation, the majority of them rejected Hitler. The Nazis led the polling with 17,277,180 votes—an increase of some five and a half million, but it comprised only 44 per cent of the total vote. A clear majority still eluded Hitler. All the persecution and suppression of the previous weeks did not prevent the Center Party from actually increasing its vote from 4,230,600 to 4,424,900; with its ally, the Catholic Bavarian People’s Party, it obtained a total of five and a half million votes. Even the Social Democrats held their position as the second largest party, polling 7,181,629 votes, a drop of only 70,000. The Communists lost a million supporters but still polled 4,848,058 votes. The Nationalists [Nazis], led by Papen and Hugenberg, were bitterly disappointed with their own showing, a vote of 3,136,760, a mere 8 per cent of the votes cast and a gain of less than 200,000.

Still, the Nationalists’ 52 seats, added to the 288 of the Nazis, gave the government a majority of 16 in the Reichstag. This was enough, perhaps, to carry on the day-to-day business of government but it was far short of the two-thirds majority which Hitler needed to carry out a new, bold plan to establish his dictatorship by consent of Parliament.

The plan was deceptively simple and had the advantage of cloaking the seizure of absolute power in legality. The Reichstag would be asked to pass an “enabling act” conferring on Hitler’s cabinet exclusive legislative powers for four years. Put even more simply, the German Parliament would be requested to turn over its constitutional functions to Hitler and take a long vacation.

–Williams L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

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September 29, 2026

Beyond Smart Speakers and Big Data: L1ZY (2018)

You might think that a video from 2018 couldn’t possibly “get” what is happening right now and could turn it into a brilliant and still-relevant creation. You would be wrong.

I admit that I haven’t watched this video since it was first posted eight years ago. I recommend you watch it. You will be simultaneously amused but very frightened by recognizing where we might be.

Current tech note: Facebook Portal died in 2022, Amazon Echo and Google Home are transitioning so that they don’t die too. I hear that Artificial Intelligence is very much alive.

Is there is a dark future for smart speakers in our lives—Amazon Echo, Google Home, Facebook Portal, and all the rest?

Introducing the most advanced artificial intelligence platform in modern history, in this brilliant video from Ghost + Cow. Presenting L1ZY:

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September 28, 2026

“Every day, in every way, EVERYBODY is getting better and better.”

Émile Coué (1857 – 1926) was a French psychologist, pharmacist, and hypnotist who introduced a popular method of psychotherapy and self-improvement based on optimistic autosuggestion. Twenty times each morning and night, you are to repeat:

“Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”

This became the basis of the modern self-help and positive thinking movement.

Mahayana Buddhism would offer a slightly different take on this. Maxims and mantras are recommended, as ways of training our minds and liberating ourselves from suffering. It is equally important to work for the liberation of everybody else. Everybody. Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, famously vowed to delay his own ultimate liberation until every single sentient being is freed from suffering.

So in addition to Coué’s mantra, we can add this:

“Every day, in every way, everybody is getting better and better.”

Don’t believe it? Then help to make it happen.

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