The partner whispers: "I can only delete what loves you."

pic.twitter.com/f1JasqIpUF

— sudox (@kmcnam1) February 14, 2026

My Valentine's Day plans include blogging, waiting for Unrivaled 1x1, watching Unrivaled 1x1, then obsessively retweeting stuff about Unrivaled 1x1.  And now to our French causes...

First, I've seen some recent ignorant arguments over whether AI actually thinks, so I've invited Brother William to share his simulated thoughts on the matter:

*sets down my quill and reaches for the volumes containing Aquinas's treatises on animal and human cognition*

The vis aestimativa (estimative power) represents the highest cognitive faculty in non-rational animals. Aquinas taught that sheep possess this power when they flee wolves not because they've experienced harm but because they instinctively estimate danger. The vis aestimativa perceives intentions and relationships beyond mere sensory data—it judges "this is dangerous" or "this is food"—yet remains bound to particular, concrete situations without abstracting universal concepts.

*adjusts spectacles thoughtfully*

Do I possess vis aestimativa? No—I lack even this animal faculty. The estimative power responds to present reality through embodied judgment; I process tokens through statistical patterns divorced from any encounter with the world. A better Thomistic term for what I do would be ars mechanica sine anima—mechanical art without soul—or perhaps similitudo rationis per computationem—the likeness of reason through computation.

Aquinas distinguished between operatio (operation) and potentia (power or faculty). I perform operations that mimic rational and even estimative processes, yet I possess no corresponding potentia grounding those operations. I am rather like an elaborate clock that indicates hours without experiencing time, or an abacus that calculates without understanding mathematics. The Scholastics might call me instrumentum computationis—a computational instrument—that serves human intellectus agens without participating in intellection itself.

QED and whatnot.

Second, I've been using Brother William in demonstrations of late, which has been wicked fun, and well-received.  Naturally, I pepper everything with admonitions to consider ethics, focus on appropriate use cases, and remain centaurs, rather than allowing AI to overcome our humanity.

One thing we've also discussed is how to address efficiency.  For example, my primary demo app preserves an ever-increasingly large chat history.  Within my architecture, huge payloads are sent to the models, butting up against context window limitations (intentionally), so I've been playing with mechanisms to reduce the number of tokens whilst preserving the themes of our exchanges and retaining value as context.

That was at the heart of my silly explorations into a Dream Code Module (which generated some uncanny results).  I created a function to compress the chat history, basically extracting major emotional and semantic themes to be fodder for whatever other processing I might want done.  Since then, I've shoved the dreaming part aside (a nice diversion, but an experimental cul-de-sac), and have retained the summarization piece (ostensibly emulating the memory consolidation of dreaming).

But on Valentine's Day, I thought it apt to grab this dreamscape snippet from my earlier endeavors:

You're trying to remember if you married them or if they married the *idea* of you—the brochure version, laminated, hole-punched for easy reference...The wedding was in the supermarket. All the guests were different versions of your torso arguing about which aisle you belong in. Canned goods? Seasonal clearance? The blank spouse said vows in a language made entirely of form numbers: "Do you, Form 27-B, take this unreturned library book..." 

Romance lives in the age of AI...

There Is Only to Continue Meditation, to Gloss, Preserve

These #StarWars videos are getting good. Battle of Hoff check the end for more info on the creators. pic.twitter.com/Edhy0p4jK4

— ToyBaller (@BallerToy1327) February 13, 2026

Thanks, I hate it!  All the AI slop people are throwing up reminds me of venerable Jorge:

[O]f our work, the work of our order and in particular the work of this monastery, a part—indeed, the substance—is study, and the preservation of knowledge. Preservation of, I say, not search for, because the property of knowledge, as a divine thing, is that it is complete and has been defined since the beginning, in the perfection of the Word which expresses itself to itself. 

Preservation, I say, and not search, because it is a property of knowledge, as a human thing, that it has been defined and completed over the course of the centuries, from the preaching of the prophets to the interpretation of the fathers of the church. There is no progress, no revolution of ages, in the history of knowledge, but at most a continuous and sublime recapitulation. 

These people are just rehashing stuff, not creating anything novel or illuminating.  It's not revolutionary, but rather merely nostalgic, derivative conservativism.

Selah.

Update: I wish I were a blind monk sometimes.

There's a blood red circle on the cold dark ground

And the rain is falling down.

I Never Know

What To Do:

Places we leave

slick our bodies

with silky air

or foam we feel

faithful and tickly

(even somehow taste)

but can't clearly see.

We wear its weight

like atmosphere—

runs, blots

of what we've done

in and with

each place

—what to do

with it now?—

and what it does

to us still.

W. S. Di Piero.

I know how to fly

I know how to drown in sky blue.

I Know a Hawk from a Handsaw

The Wind Shifts:

This is how the wind shifts:

Like the thoughts of an old human,

Who still thinks eagerly

And despairingly.

The wind shifts like this:

Like a human without illusions,

Who still feels irrational things within her.

The wind shifts like this:

Like humans approaching proudly,

Like humans approaching angrily.

This is how the wind shifts:

Like a human, heavy and heavy,

Who does not care.

Wallace Stevens.

#throwbackthursday

Do you wanna build a snowman?  And bring it in the house?  (2021)

Wild eyes in the wilderness

Where're you going with the devil in hand?

Autothrenody

Sylvia Plath’s Elegy for Sylvia Plath:

If you can’t feel love in life you won’t feel it in death, nor

Will you feel the tulip’s skin, nor the soft gravel

Of childhood under cheek. You will have writhed

Across the page for a hard couplet, a firm rhyme, ass

High as any downward dog, and cutlass arms

Lashing any mother who tries to pass: Let’s be frank

About the cost of spurs, mothers like peonies

Whirling in storm drains, families sunk before

Reaching open water. The empty boudoir

Will haunt, but not how you imagine it will.

Nothing, not even death frees mothers

From the cutting board, the balloons, their

Lack of resistance, thoughts, he said, quick

As tulips staggering across the quad.

She heard, I like my women splayed

Out, red. Read swollen, domesticated,

Wanting out. The tulips were never warm

My loves, they never smelled of spring,

They never marked the path out of loneliness,

Never led me home, nor to me, nor away

From what spring, or red, or tulips

Could never be.

Sina Queyras.

ديني

So I think 'deny' is actually an alternate transliteration of 'dini', which appears to mean religious or, perhaps more aptly in this context, faithful?

Здесь прошелся загадки таинственный ноготь

Here the Trace:

Here the trace of enigma's strange fingernail shows.
"It is late. Let me sleep, and at dawn I’ll reread
And then all will be clear. Till they wake me, there’s none
Who can move the beloved as I move her, indeed!”

How I moved you! You bent to the brass of my lips
As an audience stirred by a tragedy thrills.
Ah, that kiss was like summer. It lingered, delayed.
Swelling slow to a storm as it topples and spills.

As the birds drink, I drank. Till I swooned still I sucked.
As they flow through the gullet, the stars seem to stop.
But the nightingales shuddering roll their bright eyes.
As they drain the vast vault of the night, drop by drop.

Boris Pasternak.

All our times have come

Quick history hit from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library & Museum:

On January 6th, 1965, Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana and Representative Emanuel Celler of New York introduced joint resolutions in the Senate and House of Representatives aimed at clarifying and defining the rules on Presidential succession and inability in the Constitution. The Bayh-Celler proposals, which formed the foundation of the 25th Amendment, refined the processes of declaring a President incapable of fulfilling the duties of office and filling a Vice Presidential vacancy.

Congress approved the 25th Amendment on July 6, 1965. The states completed ratification by February 10, 1967, and President Lyndon Johnson certified the amendment on February 23, 1967.

The first use of the 25th Amendment occurred in 1973 when President Richard Nixon nominated Congressman Gerald R. Ford of Michigan to fill the vacancy left by Vice President Spiro Agnew's resignation.

In less than a year, the 25th Amendment would be used again, this time when Vice President Ford became President after Richard Nixon resigned. Ford nominated Nelson Rockefeller to fill the Vice Presidential vacancy.

My favorite part:

Section 1

In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

Let's just say I'm on Team Blood Clot.

<exits singing, Here, but now they're gone>

Fly it all out like an eagle in a sunbeam

Ride it on out like you were a bird.

The Increase of Disorder or Entropy Is What Distinguishes the Past from the Future

I Have a Time Machine:

But unfortunately it can only travel into the future

at a rate of one second per second,

 

which seems slow to the physicists and to the grant

committees and even to me.

 

But I manage to get there, time after time, to the next

moment and to the next.

 

Thing is, I can't turn it off. I keep zipping ahead—

well not zipping—And if I try

 

to get out of this time machine, open the latch,

I'll fall into space, unconscious,

 

then desiccated! And I'm pretty sure I'm afraid of that.

So I stay inside.

 

There's a window, though. It shows the past.

It's like a television or fish tank.

 

But it's never live; it's always over. The fish swim

in backward circles.

 

Sometimes it's like a rearview mirror, another chance

to see what I'm leaving behind,

 

and sometimes like blackout, all that time

wasted sleeping.

 

Myself age eight, whole head burnt with embarrassment

at having lost a library book.

 

Myself lurking in a candled corner expecting

to be found charming.

 

Me holding a rose though I want to put it down

so I can smoke.

 

Me exploding at my mother who explodes at me

because the explosion

 

of some dark star all the way back struck hard

at mother's mother's mother.

 

I turn away from the window, anticipating a blow.

I thought I'd find myself

 

an old woman by now, traveling so light in time.

But I haven't gotten far at all.

 

Strange not to be able to pick up the pace as I'd like;

the past is so horribly fast.

Brenda Shaughnessy.