In Rome, the old rug that ties Western Civ together, empire began with Caesar thrice refusing the crown.

“Mobs beget mobsters”, Matt Pearce in his newsletter

Robin submitted half of this sentence as a “perfect phrase”, which unfortunately breaks the rules of the newsletter. And I think it actually is pretty perfect with the rest of it. “Ceasar thrice refusing the crown” could be a Mountain Goats song.

While fish physiology is, in many ways, similar to humans’, there are some key differences.

“Fish Have a Brain Microbiome. Could Humans Have One Too?”, Yasemin Saplakoglu for Quanta Magazine

Submitted by Ranjit.

He was superintellectual but, on the other hand, he also wrote a lot of porn.

Fey Fey in an interview with T Magazine

It isn’t required that you know this sentence is about Georges Bataille, but it is very funny that it’s about him.

I'm fucking blasted and hanging out in the weirdest scene because history happened at a deeply inconvenient hour.

Sarah Jeong posting through the overthrow of the South Korean presidency on Bluesky

My cheekbone, my body, the way I raise my hands, the uniform, the extras behind me, the green, the explosions: It’s a big soup, and I’m just trying to be the best carrot I can be in that soup.

Willem Dafoe in an interview with Matt Zoller Seitz in Vulture

Submitted by James.

Horror owes you nothing, just as America owes you nothing.

Brendan C. Byrne reviewing Negative Space by B.R. Yeager in The Whitney Review of New Writing, issue 4

Some bias here because Brendan is a friend and past collaborator, but he’s also very good.

Everything is alive, in terms of the sorrow, the grief, the joy, the ambitions, the pettiness, the jealousy, the aspirations, all of it.

Claudia Rankine in an interview with E.Jane in The Whitney Review of New Writing, issue 4

I am so grateful that Whitney Mallett decided to make an exclusively print magazine in this accursedly online day and age.

Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen!

“Howl”, Allen Ginsberg

Via someone posting an excerpt of the poem on Bluesky, I don’t go around re-reading epic poems just because.