Alan Jacobs

This astonishingly advanced and beautiful car was also known by the punning pronunciation of the initials DS in French as “La Déesse” – the goddess. The philosopher Roland Barthes, who was later killed in a car crash, compared the genius of the design of the Déesse to the building of the great French medieval cathedrals as a supreme expression of the spirit of the age. He mentions the many-spired cathedral of Chartres, an ever-fixed mark to which we steered across the yellow oceans of maize and sunflowers from Rouen, and in which I once spent the night hidden between pews in a sleeping bag. Modern France’s new religion of mobility was all there in the Déesse.

And Barthes was right. The Déesse was a kind of miracle, and a lift in one after a long, dusty vigil in the sun could feel like divine providence. Perched on the Déesse’s sighing white leather seats, hugging our rucksacks, we marvelled at the way the steering wheel appeared to float like a halo, magically suspended by an almost invisible stalk. Shakespeare wrote “My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.” You’d never say that about the Déesse. The car floated, gliding forward effortlessly, having levitated with unhurried dignity from its parked stance, slumped on all fours. You wouldn’t choose a DS for a bank robbery. And there was so much glass. No car had ever been this transparent. Even the headlights swivelled about like two eyes, mysteriously coordinated with the steering, so the Déesse had the uncanny, almost supernatural ability to see round corners at night. The ineffable design still remains outside time, more modern, more confident, than anything that has come since.

— Roger Deakin

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This astonishingly advanced and beautiful car was also known by the punning pronunciation of the initials DS in French as “La Déesse” – the goddess. The philosopher Roland Barthes, who was later killed in a car crash, compared the genius of the design of the Déesse to the building of the great French medieval cathedrals as a supreme expression of the spirit of the age. He mentions the many-spired cathedral of Chartres, an ever-fixed mark to which we steered across the yellow oceans of maize and sunflowers from Rouen, and in which I once spent the night hidden between pews in a sleeping bag. Modern France’s new religion of mobility was all there in the Déesse.

And Barthes was right. The Déesse was a kind of miracle, and a lift in one after a long, dusty vigil in the sun could feel like divine providence. Perched on the Déesse’s sighing white leather seats, hugging our rucksacks, we marvelled at the way the steering wheel appeared to float like a halo, magically suspended by an almost invisible stalk. Shakespeare wrote “My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.” You’d never say that about the Déesse. The car floated, gliding forward effortlessly, having levitated with unhurried dignity from its parked stance, slumped on all fours. You wouldn’t choose a DS for a bank robbery. And there was so much glass. No car had ever been this transparent. Even the headlights swivelled about like two eyes, mysteriously coordinated with the steering, so the Déesse had the uncanny, almost supernatural ability to see round corners at night. The ineffable design still remains outside time, more modern, more confident, than anything that has come since.

— Roger Deakin

Have you heard of the Benedict Option? If not, you will soon.

It’s the name of a deeply pessimistic cultural project that’s capturing the imaginations of social conservatives as they come to terms with the realization that the hopes and assumptions that animated the religious right over the past 35-odd years have been dashed by the sweeping triumph of the movement for same-sex marriage.

—Damon Linker. I am not a member of the Benedict Option magisterium, so what I think has no authority, but as someone who’s interested in some form of the Benedict Option I have to say that I don’t agree with any of this. I don’t think it’s “a deeply pessimistic cultural project,” I don’t see it as having anything to do with the Christian right, and same-sex marriage is at most a triggering issue, not fundamental. To me, it’s an opportunity to get more people on board with a project that I’ve been devoted to for thirtysomething years: shifting Christian energy and resources away from electoral politics and towards the strengthening of institutions and communities.

“In a statement conceding defeat, the Iona Institute, the main opposition group, said it would continue to affirm ‘the importance of biological ties and of motherhood and fatherhood.’ The absurdity of that statement speaks for itself.”

- The Victory for Same-Sex Marriage in Ireland - NYTimes.com. I can’t tell exactly what the NYT editorial board thinks is self-evidently absurd here: that “biological ties” are important? That “motherhood and fatherhood” are important? Both?

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Have you heard of the Benedict Option? If not, you will soon.  

It’s the name of a deeply pessimistic cultural project that’s capturing the imaginations of social conservatives as they come to terms with the realization that the hopes and assumptions that animated the religious right over the past 35-odd years have been dashed by the sweeping triumph of the movement for same-sex marriage.

In a statement conceding defeat, the Iona Institute, the main opposition group, said it would continue to affirm ‘the importance of biological ties and of motherhood and fatherhood.’ The absurdity of that statement speaks for itself.

Any time I make [on Twitter] some sort of joke along racial lines or dealing with racial politics, I know that immediately there’s going to be a wave of positive response from people who know where I’m coming from and who share a basic aesthetic. The first five minutes, I know that I’m going to get positive responses. Then, minute six, it starts to go beyond that little bubble. Some people come in who don’t even recognize the humor, because humor is a declaration of in-group status. The further away you go from the center, the less they understand the context of it. Twitter is not just American. Race is completely based on context, so as soon as the discussion goes out of America, say once it gets to Britain, it gets a slightly different take. Then it goes past that and things get more and more absurd. Once that wave hits outside of America, all of a sudden people are looking at my picture going, ‘Why is this guy talking like he’s black?’

“

Thirty years ago, in the ‘1984’ Macintosh commercial directed by Ridley Scott, a young woman smashed the big screen her fellow citizens were forced to watch and obey. You imagine them standing up and rebelling afterwards.  

Today, in the 'Up’ Apple Watch commercial seemingly directed by Stanley Milgram, a young woman docilely stands when a little screen strapped to her wrist tells her to.

”

- Dr. Drang

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Thirty years ago, in the ‘1984’ Macintosh commercial directed by Ridley Scott, a young woman smashed the big screen her fellow citizens were forced to watch and obey. You imagine them standing up and rebelling afterwards.  

Today, in the 'Up’ Apple Watch commercial seemingly directed by Stanley Milgram, a young woman docilely stands when a little screen strapped to her wrist tells her to.

“In a time when ‘to other’ has become a condemnatory verb, randos are the other. If the mores in a given ZIP code preclude snarling at people for their race, sex, creed or sexual orientation, those uncertain of their own grip on the social center can always dump on randos. It is a nice, clean slur, free of identifying social characteristics. It refers to the extras, the spear-carriers in the background, the people who apparently have only themselves to blame for their exclusion, those you’ll forget all about when you move away. Their being tagged with that handle may indeed derive, at bottom, from their race, sex, creed, sexual orientation, body shape, economic misfortune or anything else, but users always have convenient deniability at their service. After all, there are so many people around nowadays, perhaps more than all the collected dead of ages past — who can keep track? We rest secure in the knowledge that while those people over there represent arbitrary collisions of data, we ourselves are a result of long and careful planning.”

- Luc Sante. I’m feeling kinda convicted by this.

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