great(ish) pt 48: empathy, puzzles, European summer
Hello!
I’m still here, writing emails. Today: the plight of tourism in the TikTok age, a Norwegian film, a Catalan book, carbon offsetting and my favourite online puzzle.
Article: European summer redux. Fetishizing the Mediterranean for content by Kyle Chayka (published on One Thing in May 2025)
Over the last few days I’ve been wading through tourists in my local park and in the centre of Vienna, half of whom seemed to be creating some kind of content.
On a recent trip to Padova I re-read Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster, a short, intense, sad satire of tourists projecting a variety of things onto Italy with devastating results. Kyle Chayka’s piece is an update on what these vivid fantasies of the Mediterranean look like in 2025 – and how a certain set of tourists want to act out a version of what they’ve seen online instead of actually being in a place. As Chayka writes, ‘You walk around the physical world, but your mind is in the digital overlay, engaging with the monsters that exist only on your screen. The conversation you are participating in, even the primary experience that you are having, exists there, online.’
Of course, the alternative is acting like those characters in Forster’s novels who are proud of knowing what ‘real’ Italy/France/’Europe’ is like: also not great!
Film: Oslo Stories: Love, directed by Dag Johan Haugerud (2024)
It’s been a while since I watched a film with characters that felt as fully fleshed out, as real and empathetic as Marianne and Tor, the protagonists of Oslo Stories: Love. She’s a urologist, he’s a nurse, and while the bulk of the story is about their differing approaches to love and intimacy, it’s their work in the hospital that really moved me: one scene after another of delivering bad news to patients, following up with them, offering advice and care, debating how to improve on what they’re doing. An understated, thoroughly undramatic story about the workplace wrapped inside the bigger story of how to approach relationships in the age of the app. I can’t wait to see the other films in Haugerud’s loose trilogy.
Book: When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Solà (translated by Mara Faye Lethem)
It is the season of trees. All the chestnut trees are in glorious bloom. All the birds are singing. It is too warm, but not yet so scorching hot that the grass turns brown and the trees lose their leaves. It is easy to focus on what is, and forget what will be. What feels good in fiction? Every time I’m in a wood, I think of a childhood novel I loved. I’m always looking for books that create that sense of place. Irene Solà’s short novel is just that: it lets animals, clouds and plants speak as much as humans in an absolutely absorbing story of a specific place, a mountain in the Pyrenees.
Learning: The Great Cash-for-Carbon Hustle by Heidi Blake, published in the New Yorker in October 2023
An oldie but a goodie, a classic, long reported piece on the myth of carbon offsetting that investigates South Pole, the world’s largest carbon-offsetting firm, which promised ‘a mechanism that diverts funds from polluters in wealthy countries to protect crucial ecosystems in the Global South.’
Other: Past Puzzle
Like Wordle, but you have to find a year. I’m obsessed! The best part of it is that the creator provides further reading/listening for each clue once you’ve completed the puzzle, so you might find yourself listening to a podcast about the invention of the computer mouse, or about the Mansa Musa, the 14th century Mali emperor who is believed to be the richest person who ever lived.
_
That’s all! I hope you’re all well! As always, you can find all past recommendations in this spreadsheet and you can read past newsletters in the archive. Let me know what you’ve been reading, listening, or where you’ve taken the train to.