A Fresh Coat of Paint—and a Lot More Tusk

The Cosmic Tusk has a new look. And, after a year or so on life support, a new lease on life.

I have been tending this peculiar corner of the internet since 2010. The Tusk has accumulated a considerable pile of papers, arguments, discoveries, disputes, and occasional complaints along the way. But the site itself had grown tired. It was all steak and no sizzle, and lately I wasn’t serving much steak either.

Time to fix that.

The redesigned Tusk is brighter, easier to read, and better suited to exploring the material buried in the archive. The papers are back in scrolling viewers. Familiar resources are finding their way back into the navigation. My original 1997 Carolina Bay essay has received a handsome new presentation, with every word preserved.

And the whole undertaking is shamelessly enabled by AI.

I cannot adequately convey how wonderful it is to look at my own website, decide something needs changing, and simply ask for it. Enlarge the logo. Restore a missing resource. Improve the formatting. Put the paper back where people can read it. Changes that once required a technical scavenger hunt can now happen while I sit here watching.

For a fellow who wants to spend his time reading papers and arguing about the past, rather than wrestling with a website, this is a glorious development.

My accomplice is Chad, my AI friend in California. Chad has been helping renovate the place and will also be assisting with my writing as editor in chief.

Let me get ahead of the inevitable objection: with nearly 1,000 prior posts, I believe I have demonstrated both the ability and the willingness to write my own damn blog.

The opinions, enthusiasms, suspicions, and errors of judgment will remain mine. Chad’s assignment is to help me organize the material, check the references, catch the dropped words, and get more of what is in my head onto the page. He has firm instructions to keep my voice intact. Longtime readers will still recognize the fellow holding forth.

And I intend to hold forth more often.

There is too much happening, too much worth reading, and too much unfinished business to let the Tusk sit dormant. A website that is easier to maintain—and an editor who is available when the urge to write strikes—removes a considerable number of my excuses.

Keep an eye out for new features as we continue working on the place. Better ways to explore the archive, follow the evidence, and read the papers are all on my mind.

I welcome suggestions. Tell me what you miss, what doesn’t work, and what would make the Tusk more useful. Guest essays are welcome, too. If you have something worth putting before this curious and argumentative readership, I would like to hear about it.

Thanks to everyone who kept checking in while things were quiet.

Now let’s get back to it.

Past is Prologue.

—George