Speckled Ax is the blog of the California-based Junto of the same name. We’re a group of friends who like to get together and share stuff we’re thinking about, write about it (here and elsewhere), and occasionally launch fun and usually quixotic projects.
What’s a Junto?
In his Autobiography, Benjamin Franklin describes how he “form’d most of [his] ingenious acquaintance into a club of mutual improvement, which was called the Junto.” The Junto met weekly, with members taking turns leading discussions on “Morals, Politics, or Natural Philosophy,” each presenting their own original writing at least once every three months. But they weren’t all talk — for instance, Philadelphia’s first lending library and fire department were both ideas incubated in the Junto.
So you think you’re Franklin-caliber geniuses or something?
Absolutely not. We have crippling imposter syndrome. But we’re inspired by his Junto model as a vehicle to improve ourselves and, hopefully, our communities.
What does the the speckled ax signify?
In an effort to attain “moral perfection,” Franklin devised a list of 13 virtues: temperance, order, frugality, cleanliness, chastity, etc., and created a weekly chart with one row per virtue and one column for each day. Each time he ran afoul of one of those virtues, he placed a black dot in the corresponding box. He tried for some time to clean up his literally spotty record, but made little progress. Eventually he gave up on perfection, recounting the story of a neighbor who once bought an ax and asked the seller if he could make the entire head of the ax as shiny as the edge. The smith was like, ok, but you’ll have to turn the grindstone. The neighbor ground and ground and ground before ultimately saying, you know what, “… I think I like a speckled ax best.”
What’s this blog about?
Basically, stuff we find interesting. Helpful, right? But to give you a sense of what that might be, we’re scientists (some of us disgruntled), data experts, policy and political nerds, urbanists, parents. We prize knowledge and critical thinking, and worry about a potential future where these unique human treasures become increasingly scarce. In addition to our professional work we’ve previously written about transportation, academia, AI, extremist political movements, and new models for scientific inquiry, to name a few topics.
Any topic is fair game, but the one strict rule of the blog is that while we might write about AI, we do not use LLMs or other AI tools to write for us. Everything in these pages comes from our own speckled minds.
This sounds cool, how do I join your Junto?
A big part of what makes this work is we all know each other — we’re at least friends-of-friends. But if our posts resonate and you regularly post comments and feedback, maybe we’ll get to know you. We’re also thinking of ways to expand the Junto with affiliated organizations and/or local chapters; hopefully more to come on that soon.
Who is asking all these questions?
Nobody. No FAQ has ever been based on actual questions, let alone frequently-asked ones.
