Alan Jacobs

Chelsea FC: Finally fulfilling its God-given role as a feeder club for American soccer managers. ⚽️ 

Oh cool, it’s Emo Dorothy Sayers.

Via Ethan Iverson, Vinnie Sperrazza gives us the backbeats.

Plan de l’exposition universelle de 1900. Full-size image here.

just before I lost that finger

First the Crush commercial and now this: Apple seems to have decided that the enemy they must destroy is … artists, especially ones who don’t make much money. Apple is getting close to Spotify levels of scumminess.

This article on the essential Shel Slverstein omits what I believe to be his masterpiece: Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book.

I wrote about something I call the diaconal charism. 

I wrote about anarchism as a spiritual discipline.

Writers at their desks 

Thesis: the first album — as a coherent work of art, not merely a collection of songs — was Frank Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours (1955); the last one was Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1998). 

The thing I love about sports is the way it can bring the world’s top political powers together. 

USA men’s 🏀, gold medal game, shooting in the last 3 minutes:

• Curry made 3
• Durant made 2 FT
• Curry made 3
• Curry made 3
• Curry made 3
• Booker made 2

Sixteen points, and they didn’t miss.

I’m really touched by Robin’s kind words here. (Also, what a great newsletter issue.) 

So Emma Hayes leads the (formerly quite broken) USWNT to a gold medal and all the Brit footy commentators can talk about is how she got her tactics all wrong. ⚽️

This new post by Chris Arnade — faithful chronicler of forgotten America — is harrowing. And I come away from it just praying that something good will happen for the young woman he met named Caroline.

Tradescant’s Orchard (Bodleian Library) 

What a cool idea from Leah Libresco Sargeant: “I’d like to write a Chrome extension that delays opening certain webpages (like Twitter) and shows an interstitial page for 30 seconds or so, with a randomly chosen prayer intention from a list I can edit.”

I have no idea why, but I have received dramatically more fan mail — that is, messages of enthusiastic gratitude — about my essay on “the mythical method” than I am used to. (Usually people only write to tell me what I’m wrong about.)