I haven’t been sure how much to disclose in this newsletter, but: the not-so-great but maybe-manageable news I got in mid-March spiraled into essentially a torching of my relationship with my PhD advisor in the last couple of weeks. It’s been sad, because I do respect my advisor as a scholar and thought she was someone I could trust. (The specifics are internecine and tedious and probably airing them here will cause problems; it involves questionable decisions about grant spending and her leaving for a new job, and it affects multiple students.) This heel turn situation is, basically, a required rite of passage of doing a PhD. I cannot recommend it! It’s very destabilizing.
Maybe the more important part: while I kind of just have to write a pretty bad dissertation by the end of the year and I think I can do it, I also will be figuring out my next move because aside from academia being entirely on fire right now, this whole process has made me wary of trying to succeed in a field that so blatantly rewards sociopathy. Advice, strategizing, passing along gigs, and tip jar donations very welcomed in this shitty moment. (And, of course, always sentences.)
The Rohingya are people, not lessons.
“Meta in Myanmar, Part IV: Only Connect”, Erin Kissane
I assigned Erin’s full series to my CS Ethics students because we had a window for a two week reading. Erin was gracious enough to join the class via zoom and it was really nice to have her speak to them, even if we did have to explain the idea of federated social networks to them because they are all like 20 years old and fucking normal.
Which is often an interesting way to consume thought; like listening only to the third-tier bands in a scene, you get exposed to really crude and blunt versions of tropes that aren’t noticeable in the more sophisticated works.
“abundance on the cheap”, Dan Davies in the newsletter Back of Mind
Submitted by craig.
Spiritually, “G6” inspired a mild existential spiral in me every time those first few synths caused the floor to wobble, a stark reminder that I was spending eight hours a day sitting at a desk job I loathed, and the only antidote was two-for-one vodka sodas served with too much ice.
“Resurrector: ‘Like a G6’”, Chris Gayomali for The Believer
Something satisfied and mocking settles into their gaze as a result, a glint of the successful heist that can never be extinguished.
“Sisyphus in the Capital”, Eskor David Johnson for The Believer
Some runner-up sentences:
Crime made children of us all, shrinking the world until it is comprised mostly of places not to go and things not to touch, times by which to tuck yourself into bed until the bullies said so.
Yet in taking matters into his own hands, Abu Bakr joined a long, ancient list of reckless men—and they have all been men—for whom the state is seen as a matter of opinion, and who always arrive at the same divine insight that the best way of fixing it is to run it themselves.
Right now I am listening to a playlist called Whitney Houston Encounters Epistemology.
“Two Easy Pieces”, Dan Hon in his newsletter Things That Caught My Attention
Submitted by (a different) Erin, as two sentences together, but I picked this one.
“The thing about swimming,” she caught her breath, “is that you ALREADY KNOW HOW TO DO IT.”
A caption on Instagram by my friend Clara
The speaker here is Clara’s kid, who is delightful, and as an opening line it’s really good.
The notion that taxing Lesotho gemstones is necessary for the U.S. to add steel jobs in Ohio is so absurd that I briefly lost consciousness in the middle of writing this sentence.
“There Is Only One Way to Make Sense of the Tariffs”, Derek Thompson for The Atlantic
Submitted by Lex.
We are a shoe shop selling shoes to the tourists that visit the island and do not export shoes to the US or have any business with the US.
The manager of Franks Shoes on Norfolk Island, Australia, as quoted in an article in The Guardian
Submitted by Justin.
Grandma’s secret cake recipe, passed down generation to generation, could be literally passed down: a flat slab of beige ooze kept in a battered pan, DNA-spliced and perfected by guided evolution by her own deft and ancient hands, a roiling wet mass of engineered microbes that slowly scabs over with delicious sponge cake, a delectable crust to be sliced once a week and enjoyed still warm with cream and spoons of pirated jam.
"What Are The Civilian Applications?", Matt Webb on his blog Interconnected
Submitted by Gavin as only the "a flat slab..." etc. part but that is not how we do things in this newsletter.