I missed this when I sent out last week’s newsletter but there are a bunch of new subscribers thanks to a very generous shout-out by Robin Sloan in his newsletter. Thanks, Robin! And hello, new readers!
I’m not sure if this new crop of subscribers is the reason that there were a lot of submissions this week but regardless: great work, everyone.
When I say I had not heard of “Benson Boone,” I meant I was not aware of the existence of the person in this video, who looks a bit like Paul Mescal if he was playing Freddie Mercury in a touring production of something called Bohemian Rhapsody: The Live Experience and also was taking 300mg of Wellbutrin daily.
“FYPCore and the Benson Boone-iverse”, Max Read’s newsletter Read Max
I wish I was made of writing, because then I wouldn't be in such a stage of physical collapse, and I would still be as gorgeous looking as I was 40 years ago instead of just almost as gorgeous looking as I was 40 years ago.
Alan Moore as interviewed by Zach Rabiroff in “Long Memory of Alan Moore, Part II” for Flaming Hydra
Submitted by Ed last week, but I didn’t see it in time.
Still, I am not paying inordinate sums for daycare just to have my future descendants get whacked by some space rock.
“What Happens if this Hazardous Asteroid Hits Earth?”, Becky Ferreira for 404 Media
Submitted by Ed (this week!).
To say anything else is frosting.
Review of The World After Gaza by Sasha Frere-Jones for 4Columns
One might argue this sentence hits harder in context but I disagree. A more direct banger of a sentence from this review:
The World After Gaza is the work of a magpie with poor eyesight caroming through a bookshop, nodding at the noteworthy titles and pitching in a few topics to let you know that he’s looked at Twitter.
I convinced myself ADHD was a decayed tooth waiting to be pulled.
“ADHD Didn't Break Me—My Parents Did”, Ahmed Soliman’s newsletter Claiming Attention
Submitted by Sam.
Measuring approximately 68mm long, 35mm wide and 33mm thick, the Erfoud manuport is noteworthy for resembling a ‘perfectly naturalistic and life-size, non-erect human penis.’
The Wikipedia entry for manuports
Submitted by Margaret.
Her prose has the clean, placeless scent of laundry detergent; in another life, she would have been a minor satirist of bourgeois habit.
“Good-bye, Pamela Paul”, Andrea Long Chu for New York Magazine
Unfortunately, the social sciences are poorly equipped to reflect on social life from the perspective of comedy.
“With the Blow of a Paintbrush: Contemporary Fascism and the Limits of Historical Analogy”, Boris Buden for e-flux journal
Leafless, branchless, barkless, they are reduced to their trunks and worn to a smooth silver-gray, as if they had always carried their own tombstones inside them.
“The Really Big One”, Kathryn Schulz for The New Yorker
Submitted by Mars, who notes that this sentence “is about the ghost forest, 'a grove of western red cedars on the banks of the Copalis River, near the Washington coast.'“
Just to be bombarded with measurements and graphs and historical data is to feel like you are a subject of a much more efficient and focused ruling order, based on science, diligence, and observation.
“Finding Comfort in the Great Lakes Ice Analysis Webpage”, Max Rivlin-Nadler for Hell Gate
Submitted by Mars.
The world is a computer made out of crabs, infinitely entangled at every level, and singing, full-throated, the song of its own becoming.
Ways of Being, James Bridle
Submitted by Kieffer.
No buts about it, the butthole is one of the finest innovations in the past 540 million years of animal evolution.
“Why watching comb jellies poop has stunned evolutionary biologists”, Amy Maxmen for Science
Submitted by Ranjit, who first encountered this sentence quoted in this Atlas Obscura article.
But I knew in my heart it was better to be a beast and live than to try to be good when the rules of being good were meant to kill your soul.
The Harder I Fight The More I Love You, Neko Case
Submitted by James.
Pero of fucking course que sí.
Submitted by tops.