A terrific post by Damon Krukowski about the brilliancies and inconsistencies of the Whole Earth Catalog and its offshoots. I remember poring over The Last Whole Earth Catalog when I was taking breaks in the back room of the bookstore where I worked in 1975.
I wanted to read a post from a Substack I’m not subscribed to, and I could read it for free if I downloaded the Substack app. So I did. After working my way through six screens of Substack either suggesting (Subscribe to these newsletters!) or demanding (Tell us your interests!) that I do something, I quit and deleted the app.
WALKIES???
Here Brad East considers Houellebecq’s Submission in light of P. D. James’s The Children of Men — a good comparison. I reviewed Submission some years ago. It’s a fascinating book.
Yes, this is an old theme of mine, but re: doomscrolling, you don’t have to be there.
Leah Libresco Sargeant: “There is already copious evidence that we cannot sustain a modest euthanasia regime. Though advocacy for euthanasia began with the avoidance of pain, it has inevitably slipped into making an idol of autonomy. But no human person has ever fully possessed bodily autonomy, and the legal right to destroy the body cannot make this aspiration achievable. Opposing euthanasia begins with care for the weak, but it ultimately depends on simply telling this truth about the human person.”
Cross section of Étienne-Louis Boullée’s design for Newton’s Cenotaph, 1784 — from the invaluable and endlessly fascinating Public Domain Review, which you can support here.
If you’re absolutely determined to use a social media platform, then sure, Free Our Feeds is a good idea. But the essential protocols are already in place, and your feeds are already free, on the open web.
Wonderful clouds partly covering the full moon this pre-dawn. I found myself wondering what John Ruskin, who was obsessed by clouds, would say about that sky. Here’s a wonderful essay by Sandra Kemp on Ruskin’s fascination with clouds.
Poster by Tall Paul Kelly.
Didn’t have a proper telephoto lens — this is from my iPhone camera at 10x — but it was fun to watch the aoudad meandering about when I was up on the hilltop. They were introduced to Texas, somewhat accidentally, a hundred years ago and have become, in the opinion of some, an invasive species. Fun fact for those interested in the venereal game: a herd of aoudad is called an anger.
Samuel Arbesman on humanistic computation. I really hope Sam can Make This Happen in a serious way.
This story of a massive archaeological dig in the Orkneys is utterly compelling.
A nice brief profile of my parish church. There’s much more that could be said about its success, and maybe one day I’ll share my thoughts.
