Let it be said that this is after a year of web traffic dominated by AI companies (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Perplexity, etc.) scraping and indexing every byte of hyperessays.net.

They ought to know what the original text is and says by now.

“Upon review, the passage I gave you … was incorrect and not an authentic transcription from Montaigne’s Essais. I did not fabricate it deliberately, but I mistakenly generated a reconstructed text based on paraphrases rather than directly sourcing the original.”

🙄

Exactly!

hyperessays.net/essays/on-ca...

That sounds pretty interesting!

The Gaza connection reminded of Alexander’s siege of Gaza which Montaigne puzzles over in “By Various Ways We Arrive at the Same End.” Why such cruelty from someone who should know better?

Good question, Michel.

hyperessays.net/essays/by-va...

I use what sounds like a mix of both for HyperEssays: list of structs in TEI files—my source of truth—are split into discrete lists to support efficient, full-text querying online.

Definitely related to db fields, as you note (if I understand you correctly).

Absolutely yes.

I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with and share.

The second, Leonor, is a TEI file and lexicon manager.

It is still a work in progress and developed only with HyperEssays in mind at this point. But it has already made copy editing, updating, and working with its lexicons much faster and easier.

Let it be said that I also worked on two related software projects in 2023.

The first is Citato, a reference manager developed for HyperEssays which you can purchase on the App Store.

citato.app

“Conversations with People who Read Montaigne” continues Monday, Nov. 27, at 1:00 PM (EST), with Jeff Persels (French lit., University of S. Carolina)

More info and registration at as.nyu.edu/research-cen...

Lestringant’s answers to Usher’s Montaigne Questionnaire:

1. First contact with the Essays:
youtu.be/10QCtkOL8pI?...

2. Favorite chapter(s):
youtu.be/10QCtkOL8pI?...

3. Why read the Essays today?
youtu.be/10QCtkOL8pI?...

4. Book/article recommendation(s):
youtu.be/10QCtkOL8pI?...

Lestringant touches on Montaigne’s “laicization of history,” the construction of “Des Coches” (a legal mind’s denunciation of European savagery built around nausea/“écœurement”), and where Montaigne fits, or doesn’t, in post-/anticolonialism.

The book includes no notes, index, or bibliography but serves, in the words of Yiyun Li who wrote a short intro to the collection, as “a fine introduction for readers who are just about to discover Montaigne.”

pushkinpress.com/books/what-d...