Agnes Callard’s marriage of the minds newyorker.com

“No, it’s like the philosophy-is-a-preparation-for-death thing,” he said, quoting one of Socrates’ most famous lines. “Maybe our marriage is a preparation for divorce. The thing we’re trying to do is approach that fact—that another person could be so deeply tied to the meaning of your life that, without the relationship, life might feel meaningless.” He was uncomfortable with how dependent this made him feel, and he thought he should somehow overcome it. According to Aristotle, “Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient.” He was striving to fulfill that ideal. “It’s something that I’m aiming for, and it’s something that I don’t have yet,” he said.

Structured procrastination structuredprocrastination.com

Take for example the item right at the top of my list right now. This is finishing an essay for a volume in the philosophy of language. It was supposed to be done eleven months ago. I have accomplished an enormous number of important things as a way of not working on it.

The rise & fall of ‘petty tyrants’ noemamag.com

The energy required to deceive is unsustainable. Reality is relentless. The tyrant who chooses to fight it is doomed.

On the difference between rest and idleness idle.news

Some time should be wasted. That is the claim. Not all of it, not most of it, but some, deliberately, as a matter of principle.

Bitch: a history aeon.co

Where bitch can signify a strong woman, it usually denotes a weak man. Women tend to be branded bitches for being assertive, unyielding or powerful; men are labelled bitches when they are perceived as powerless. In this sense, the insult operates in opposite directions. Calling a woman a bitch likens her to a man; calling a man a bitch likens him to a woman. It is typically an emasculating slur, suggesting a lack of courage, strength or toughness, and it may also imply effeminacy or queerness. There are many variants. A man might be a plain old bitch, but he can also be dismissed as a ‘little bitch’, a ‘prison bitch’, or a ‘son of a bitch’. And while a man branded a bitch is usually framed as cowardly, a son of a bitch can, paradoxically, be bold, formidable or even admirable.

Imperial boomerang en.wikipedia.org

The imperial boomerang is the theory that governments that develop repressive techniques to control colonial territories will eventually deploy those same techniques domestically against their own citizens.

Grain of Terror vittlesmagazine.com

As I plied Dad with more and more internet evidence of rice-related anxiety, he fell silent. We looked out the window into the back garden. The closing notes of the day’s sun played out on the grass. ‘China, India, Pakistan, Iran,’ he said, quietly. ‘Russia, Greece, Turkey, Japan,’ he continued, becoming louder and bolder. ‘Malaysia!’ I realised he was listing countries that ate rice. ‘There would be a lot less people in Iran if reheated rice was deadly. There are communities in Iran that are so poor, they eat rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They don’t have a fridge or a chiller. How can you explain that, Joseph? How?’

A Teen’s Fatal Plunge Into the London Underworld newyorker.com

One reason that it’s so difficult to know what happened at Riverwalk is that Zac was by no means the only impostor in the apartment that night. Dave Sharma was a leg-breaker posing as a benevolent mentor. Akbar Shamji was a dilettante posing as an accomplished entrepreneur. And Zac was just a London kid, posing as the son of an oligarch. Each was pretending to be something he wasn’t, and each was caught up in the glitzy, mercenary aspirational culture of modern London. On a cold morning, I took a brisk walk through Regent’s Park with Matthew. He was talking about his disappointment in the official investigation and describing how, for him and Rachelle, the past four years have been a dark journey of discovery. With time, and with endless probing, they have come to understand more fully the life of their son. They have also come to see their city in a very different light. “It’s been eye-opening for us,” Rachelle told me. “This whole world we did not know about, this underworld that exists on our doorstep.” As Matthew and I walked, he muttered, “Sometimes it really makes me hate London. It makes me want to leave.”

UK Foundations ukfoundations.co

The result is a ‘missing middle’ in cities like London, where only the very well-off and very badly-off can afford to live there, excluding lower- and middle-income people from elsewhere in the country. Even many higher earners cannot afford to live anywhere near the centre once they have children. The impoverishment of coastal and post-industrial towns cannot be understood without looking at housing shortages in more prosperous parts of the country: both are the products of Britain’s planning system.

I was kidnapped by idiots theatlantic.com

Once, when I was singing in my cell to keep my spirits up, a torturer who went by the name Yasser—a corpulent man who gave himself the rank of major—ordered me to lower my voice: “Volume down!” Then he asked in Arabic whether his English usage was correct. He was pleased with himself when I said it was. His need for affirmation was so pathetic that in other circumstances, it would have been touching. Even more pathetic was when Maher, who initially had claimed to be a captain, discovered that Yasser’s imaginary rank outranked his own. He immediately corrected himself, insisting that I call him Major Maher.

A Nation of subscribers compactmag.com

In a word, to introduce permanent renting is to take away political freedom, and not just because of economic disadvantages. More fundamentally, permanent renting conditions people in ways that are antithetical to political freedom. Not having a secure place in the world shapes you, and what it shapes you into is the kind of person who isn’t able truly to engage in politics, even if there are no explicit legal barriers keeping you from participating. Impermanence conditions people out of political life.

The lost art of research as leisure kasurian.com

Josef Piper, writing at the same time as Eliot, but in a defeated and fragmented Germany, declares leisure the basis of culture. By “leisure,” Pieper does not mean idleness, but the more ancient type of leisure — leisure as the Greek σχολή (scholē), or school. Pieper’s leisure is a contemplative one—it is, in essence, a style of unconstrained research. Such leisure is not merely, or singularly, the pursuit of knowledge “for its own sake,” nor is it simply “reading for pleasure.” The leisure that forms the basis of culture is a directed and intentional curiosity — it is the practice of formulating questions and seeking answers with a disposition towards wonder, not rigid certainty.

The Claims of Close Reading bostonreview.net

To make sense of a foreign language, or indeed any language, Davidson argues, a listener must begin with a stance of good faith by assuming that the person they’re listening to has rational beliefs and is making meaning.

The dawn of the post-literate society jmarriott.substack.com

In Amusing Ourselves to Death Neil Postman argues that democracy and print are virtually inseparable. An effective democracy pre-supposes a reasonably informed and somewhat critical citizenry capable of understanding and debating the issues of the day in detail and at length.

You don't have to swallow frogs degenerateart.beehiiv.com

How does a person convince themselves they need to swallow live frogs? They see themselves as being pragmatic in difficult times and willing to make difficult choices. They imagine that doing something unpleasant is the same as doing something effective. They think it will save them. But developing a rational theory of eating live frogs is not going to save anyone.

The Solidarity of the Hopeful nybooks.com

When I was writing White Teeth, the comedy of the novel in my mind was that it was about some very religious people: Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and another, third type of very religious person—rationalist liberals. That was the comedy of it: the third party didn’t think they had a faith, they felt that they were being extremely rational about life, but of course rationalist-liberalism was a philosophical system that dominated their lives and structured their reality as surely as any faith. The thing about rational liberals is they do not know what they do not know. Their map of the world is complete, defended, and impenetrable, and applied to every situation, in every country, and to all peoples. This way of thinking was one of the animating spirits of colonialism, and as comic as it is in White Teeth, in the world its consequences have often been tragic.

The wedding wars samirvarma.substack.com

Indian wedding guest lists are geopolitical documents. Every invitation is a statement of alliance, hierarchy, and carefully calibrated obligation. The average Indian wedding hosts 300-500 guests. The big ones hit 1,000+. But it's not about feeding people — it's about feeding relationships.

Peep Show: The Most Realistic Portrayal of Evil Ever Made mattlakeman.org

This is what makes Peep Show so brilliant. It doesn’t just portray evil realistically, it portrays the root of evil realistically. Mark and Jeremy cause bad things to happen to their acquaintances, co-workers, friends, loved ones, family members, and most of all, themselves, because they are consumed by their vices.

Who goes Nazi? harpers.org

Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis.

Nobody Has A Personality Anymore freyaindia.co.uk

In a therapeutic culture, every personality trait becomes a problem to be solved. Anything too human—every habit, every eccentricity, every feeling too strong—has to be labelled and explained. And this inevitably expands over time, encompassing more and more of us, until nobody is normal.

The Death of the Middle-Class Restaurant nytimes.com

Once rapidly growing commercial marvels, casual dining chains — sit-down restaurants where middle-class families can walk in without a reservation, order from another human and share a meal — have been in decline for most of the 21st century. Last year, TGI Fridays and Red Lobster both filed for bankruptcy. Outback and Applebee’s have closed dozens of locations. Pizza Hut locations with actual dining rooms are vanishingly rare, with hundreds closing since 2019.

Silence is a common davidtinapple.com

Silence, according to western and eastern tradition alike, is necessary for the emergence of persons. It is taken from us by machines that ape people. We could easily be made increasingly dependent on machines for speaking and for thinking, as we are already dependent on machines for moving.

Compression culture is making you stupid and uninteresting maalvika.substack.com

The things that matter most — love, wisdom, skill, character — resist compression for the same reason great literature does. They exist in their full particularity, in the accumulation of small moments, in the patient repetition that looks like nothing from the outside but is everything on the inside. The athlete knows that strength comes from the ten-thousandth repetition, not the first. The parent knows that trust builds through bedtime stories read with the same enthusiasm for the hundredth time. The artist knows that mastery emerges from the willingness to fail beautifully, repeatedly, until failure teaches you something failure alone can teach.

Why are we lying to young people about work? maalvika.substack.com

Everything good requires tending. Everything beautiful demands maintenance.

How To Understand Things nabeelqu.substack.com

Intelligent people simply aren’t willing to accept answers that they don’t understand — no matter how many other people try to convince them of it, or how many other people believe it, if they aren’t able to convince them selves of it, they won’t accept it.

On The Death of Daydreaming afterbabel.com

In everyday life, we can all try, however modestly, to shift our individual perceptions and behavior by embracing a more generous sense of anticipation and a healthier attitude about delay, by reframing waiting as an opportunity for daydreaming and idle time rather than an excuse for distraction, and by trying to be more patient with one another.

Coglioni, di Raffaello Baldini paolonori.it

Ecco, i coglioni fanno le cose alla rovescia, e tu li vedi che sbagliano, tu lo sai come andrebbero fatte, provi a dirglielo, anche con le buone maniere, ma loro niente, tirano dritto, tu cerchi di dargli una mano, di metterli sulla buona strada, loro ti guardano con un’aria: adesso cosa vuole questa testa di cazzo? e allora va a finire che t’arrabbi: Sono dei coglioni! Ti sfoghi in piazza, e in piazza c’è anche qualcuno che ti ascolta: Hai ragione, sono coglioni, però. Però? Cosa si può fare? sono tanti, comandano loro.

The Physics of Sunsets science-and-fiction.org

I've long been interested in why sunsets look the way they do - I've discovered the topic by trying to re-create them in real-time 3d rendering in Flightgear and have been admiring, photographing and filming sunsets ever since, trying to figure out more and more of the intricate details one sees.

The Painted Protest harpers.org

The unreality of the present moment should be a boon for artists and all who deal in the imagination. I don’t particularly care to have my awareness raised; I’d rather view art that tears open my consciousness, that opens portals into the mysterious. I like art the most when it doesn’t mean a thing, or otherwise when its beauty or strangeness transcends its subject. Stop making so much sense. Art should do more than communicate: it should move us; it should make us weep; it should bring us to our knees. It is, along with music, the purest expression of the human spirit. It is an important part of what makes us human—the most important part—and constitutes a continuum of yearning passed down the centuries that can be felt in every great museum or Renaissance chapel. Art is often best when it’s absolutely deranged. We are irrational, incoherent beings, and artists and writers should embrace this once more. If you believe that artworks cast spells, you should use that magic for greater causes than propagating a polite, liberal American sensibility or evading the effects of modern technology. You are free to dream anything. To build different worlds, to whisper enticements in many ears, to try to destroy reality; these are prospects that artists have dreamed of for centuries. There is still so much to imagine.

On Pilgrimage and Package Tours hedgehogreview.com

If there is a spiritual good to be found in modern travel, we would do better to identify it not in the act of travel but in the specificity of place traveled to.

Why Don’t Men Text Other Men Back? theatlantic.com

Responding to messages becomes “this looming thing that I have to do,” he said. “It turns into a source of anxiety, honestly, that I’ll always be like, I’m in text debt.” So these friendships, untended, don’t blossom.

Against Optimization forkingpaths.co

We often call such inefficiency slack. But the obvious lesson we too easily ignore in the modern world is this: slack is often both necessary and desirable. Our ability to predict the future is limited, and in an era of hyper-uncertainty, relying on ever-more precise past data only yields ever-more misguided certainty that the patterns of the past will be a reliable guide to our future.

Should You Just Give Up? newyorker.com

“Never mind what you want. What does life want?” he asks. A life task is less exalted, and more grounded, than your “calling” or your “destiny.” You may dream of becoming a director or a C.E.O. But, “if you only have a hundred dollars in the bank, your life task won’t require the immediate purchase of thousands of dollars’ worth of moviemaking equipment,” Burkeman writes. “If you’re the single parent of three small children, it won’t involve working eighteen-hour days for a tech start-up.” Your life task, right now, might be smaller and more obvious—writing a song, raising a child, getting a new job, or continuing in the one you have. Think of the contribution you can make “in the place where you actually find yourself”.

Eastern Promises thebaffler.com

The tourist acts as though they are among staff members in a grand resort or actors in a stage show; the whole hospitable nation is at their service.

How Do You Faithfully Tell the Story of a Divorce, Including Your Own? thewalrus.ca

There are three kinds of marriage. There is my marriage, which is special: distinct, complex, it defies easy categorization. There is your marriage, which is evidence: of how, as seen by me, your values have served or failed you. Then there is marriage: the category that presumes an ideal exists at all. But every marriage is turned into stories. There are the ones we tell ourselves and the ones we tell our families, the ones we tell while the marriage is intact and the ones we tell after a divorce.

This Is the Age of the Coward theindex.media

The brazen hypocrisy staggers the mind. Disney, which commands a market cap larger than the GDP of many nations, can't find the courage to even wait for court challenges? Meta, which regularly boasts its power to connect billions, suddenly can't muster the strength to defend its own policies and users? These aren't businesses making tough choices – they're paper empires run by moral cowards—simpering, whimpering, and weak. 

Trump Purged These Watchdogs From Government nytimes.com

President Trump has sworn to root out corruption within the government, yet one of his first acts as president was to fire over a dozen independent watchdogs who did exactly that. We spoke to seven of them about the abuses they uncovered, what they really think about DOGE and what all this means for the future of American democracy.

50 Years of Travel Tips kk.org

Organize your travel around passions instead of destinations. An itinerary based on obscure cheeses, or naval history, or dinosaur digs, or jazz joints will lead to far more adventures, and memorable times than a grand tour of famous places.

Big Tents and Best Versions meditationsinanemergency.com

I want to take an unscenic detour to talk about what I've noticed on social media lately, and doing so is a reminder that being on social media is forever derided and dismissed, but it's where a lot of us connect with each other, gather (reliable or corrupt) information, connect, and express ourselves. I've often found it useful as a sort of laboratory for opinion. And what I've seen lately — and really all along — is a focus on morality and taste rather than strategy and possibility.

Periodic cooking of eggs nature.com

In the present article, we find that it is possible to cook albumen and yolk at two temperatures without separation by using periodic boundary conditions in the energy transport problem. Through mathematical modeling and subsequent simulation, we are able to design the novel cooking method, namely periodic cooking.

If Jeff Bezos doesn't eat the Mona Lisa, who else will? diggitmagazine.com

From a purely material perspective, it is difficult to imagine how Bezos and da Vinci's Mona Lisa could be more different. The Mona Lisa is a more than five hundred year old poplar wood panel covered with oil paint, that is now hanging in the Salle des États in the Louvre. Bezos is a white, middle aged man, who moves between multiple homes, but mainly resides in Seattle (Chen, 2024). The Mona Lisa has not left Paris since 1973, and will probably remain there, as transporting the painting poses significant risks, and its surface and structure increasingly crack and craze (Neuendorf, 2018). Bezos, on the other hand, "isn't close to death", and is both willing and able to 'leave' for his own benefit (Freedom Foundation, 2023). From socio-cultural and economic perspectives, however, both dominate their fields — be it the international art world or global tech industry —, and their 'net value' is eye-wateringly high. Symbollically, their positions might be comparable. They are both icons within their concerning spheres, and a 'final showdown' between the two might thus easily spark people's imagination and enthusiasm.

The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial ribbonfarm.com

Premium mediocre is food that Instagrams better than it tastes.

The Logic of Destruction snyder.substack.com

Think of the federal government as a car. You might have thought that the election was like getting the car serviced. Instead, when you come into the shop, the mechanics, who somehow don’t look like mechanics, tell you that they have taken the parts of your car that work and sold them and kept the money. And that this was the most efficient thing to do. And that you should thank them.

Elon Musk’s Bureaucratic Coup theatlantic.com

This is called “flooding the zone.” Taken in aggregate, these actions are overwhelming. But Musk’s political project with DOGE is actually quite straightforward: The world’s richest man appears to be indiscriminately dismantling the government with an eye toward consolidating power and punishing his political enemies.

Elon’s Twitter Destruction Playbook Hits The US Government techdirt.com

The parallel to Twitter is striking and terrifying. At Twitter, Musk’s “reform” strategy transformed a platform used by hundreds of millions for vital communication into his personal megaphone, hemorrhaging somewhere between 60-85% of its revenue in the process. But Twitter was just a private company. Now he’s applying the same destructive playbook to the federal government, where the stakes involve not just user experience or advertising dollars, but the basic functioning of American democracy.

Inside the Capitol Riot: A Video Investigation nytimes.com

The Times analyzed thousands of videos from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building to understand how it happened — and why.

Africa Has Entered a New Era of War wsj.com

Africa’s current conflicts haven’t prompted the outpouring of sympathy in the West that accompanied Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the outrage ignited by Israel’s war in Gaza. There has been no equivalent to the Live Aid concerts motivated by the Ethiopian famine in the 1980s, the protest marches over the genocide in Darfur in the early 2000s or even the #BringBackOurGirls campaign linked to the abduction of 276 schoolgirls from the Nigerian town of Chibok 10 years ago.