∞

me irl rn

∞

My old internet friend Erin Kissane and I probably have some significant disagreements about electoral politics, but there’s a deeper politics of how human beings communicate with one another about which we are in real agreement. I love the work on our common life she’s been doing ever since the Covid Tracking Project — a great example, by the way, of how anarchic practices can achieve things impossible for our formal political order. Nowadays she’s thinking about clouds and atmospheres‚ literally and metaphorically, and I am tracking carefully.

See also Ruskin on the open skies and on cloud beauty.

∞

This clip of the “worst 20 seconds in football” — from a 1993 QPR-Man City match — is just mesmerizing. The intricacy of the choreography is worthy of a Jackie Chan movie.

∞

Synopsis: Four drug-addled Englishmen are lost, confused, and at one another’s throats until a quiet, friendly Texan comes along to give them new hope and a new sense of purpose. 🍿

∞

Over at Cosmos Malick: The Girl’s Story. 

∞

A shipwreck with a great deal of champagne (and other things) 

∞

I’m teaching a class this term called Four Big Books. I describe it here. 

∞

John McWhorter:

In Latin, H was “ha,” and K as “ka” came after it. People reciting the alphabet would say “ha, ka, el ….” But Latin didn’t really need the K, because C did its job. (Caesar was pronounced “KIGH-sar.”) So people started thinking of “ha, ka” as referring just to H and saying “haka.” Heavy usage transforms pronunciation. “Haka” dropped the “H” at the start like Eliza Doolittle was taught out of in her “Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire” exercise — “aka.” Then the K changed to a “ch” — “ahcha” — and the A at the end dropped off — “ahch.” Then the “ah” changed to “ay” and hence “aitch”! We should really be calling H something like “hay.” But hey, we don’t — and the world keeps spinning.

∞

"So, Professor Jacobs, what do you work on during your summer break?” 

“Well, mainly I watch Jackie Chan movies.” 🍿

∞

A new entry in my ongoing series of posts on religion, the Bible, and the movies: this one on how that earnest purveyor of Biblical epics, Cecil B. DeMille, put more skin on the screen than any other Hollywood director and forced the creation of the Hays Code.