What it’s like to be friends with my friends, a sample conversation from lunch:
Richard: I feel like your Twitter personality is about 30% more pedantic than you are in real life.
John: I traffic in irony. I try to cultivate an ironic personality on Twitter. But I’m told maybe it doesn’t come across.
Me: What is up with you and Thucydides? You’re always bringing him up.
John: It’s not just MY thing. History of the Peloponnesian War one of the foundations of Western thought!
Richard: I didn’t read it just once, I read it TWICE.
John: I taught a semester long class on it. I’ve read several translations, but the Hobbes is the best one. Shoot, I’ve read it in CHINESE! [Pauses.] Of course you should read it in the original Greek.