I have no malice toward the Sad Beige Home, but I, personally, am thrilled I do not live here.

“Bad Influence”, Mia Sato for The Verge

It’s as if 3M’s accidental invention of Post-It notes while failing to make space glue landed them a UN veto.

“Against the dark forest”, Erin Kissane on wreckage/salvage

Submitted by Justin. Erin is one of the handful of people in this world who fills me with the resolve to Keep Going, and I appreciate her thinking in public very much.

When I wander through the foothills where I live, among the mosses, barks, bugs, and streams, the unleashed dogs and anxious deer, the microbes and the ancient rocks, I feel embarrassed to think about democracy.

“Democracy Against Democracy”, Nathan Schnieder in Flaming Hydra

Nathan is another person who makes me want to believe in the world more. He was also the first professional writer in my adult life to tell me that I was a good writer and encouraged me to write more for public audiences. Thanks, Nathan.

There may be no more brazil nuts, but there are plenty of chicken nuggets.

Saving a Rainforest and Losing the World: Conservation and Displacement in the Global Tropics, Gregory M. Thaler

The real reason everyone loved the show was not because it was about alien autopsies but because it was about motel rooms.

“Encounters With Aliens”, Patricia Lockwood for The London Review of Books

This is not the dystopia we were promised.

“The PKD Dystopia”, Henry Farrell in Programmable Mutter

Submitted by Matt.

When the cohort last signed off, a concerned sorcerer had teleported an outmatched cleric right into a giant crocodile’s mouth.

“Murderbot, She Wrote”, Meghan Herbst for Wired

You might see various commodity flotsam, selected and then discarded at a later point in one’s Costco voyage—the same Squishmallows 16″ Plushie beached on the shores of Nature Valley Crunchy Granola Bar, Oats ‘n Honey island; a Ladies’ Active Stretch Pant draped over pack of Costco Bakery Butter Croissants; Kirkland Signature Krinkle Cut Kettle Chips on a Coddle Aria Fabric Sleeper Sofa with Reversible Chaise, and imagine that no, today, I would rather not.

“Costco in Cancún”, Simon Wu in The Paris Review

I am not going to get into the fountain pens question because it, like the paper discussion, is for sickos.

“I have some notes on Sam Altman’s note-taking advice”, Liz Lopatto for The Verge

You know, one of those things that lets you save interesting articles you encounter throughout the day and the service will go crawl the page and download the content in a nice readable format and zap it to whatever device you wanted to zap it to, so that later when you’re not anxiously toggling between the same seven feed aggregators for fifteen seconds at a time, like maybe you’re waiting in line in the grocery store and you can’t do the NYT mini because they’re on strike and you don’t cross picket lines and god forbid you have a single second of mental silence, you can open the app and begrudgingly educate yourself on something that you alleged wanted to learn about at some point in time.

“modernity is stupid: a rant not about politics”, Jenny Zhang’s blog The Roof is on Phire

Submitted by Wesley.