Another fact: Kincaid hates England.
“The Evolution of a Beloved Postcolonial Critic and Literary Giant”, Mychal Denzel Smith for The New Republic
Monopoly men fight for the privilege to spy on us and rob us blind.
“luddite”, Billie Shafran for her newsletter FLYOVER
Submitted by DB.
Ten years from now a microwave may even be able to run the country.
“In the Future All Food Will Be Cooked in a Microwave, and if You Can’t Deal With That Then You Need to Get Out of the Kitchen”, Colin Cornaby on his blog Random Thoughts
We live in an infinite sea of rats.
Niamh Quinn as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle
Submitted by Kjirste last week, but I missed it so I’m including it this week.
Perhaps inevitably, there now exists a Dubai chocolate bar in the shape of a Labubu.
“The Social Media Trend Machine Is Spitting Out Weirder and Weirder Results”, Amanda Mull for Bloomberg
Palantir has tried to correct the record itself in a series of blog posts with titles like “Palantir Is Not a Data Company” and “Palantir Is Still Not a Data Company.”
“What Does Palantir Actually Do?”, Caroline Haskins for Wired
Even if you only own AirPods for a few years, the earth owns them forever.
“AirPods Are a Tragedy”, Caroline Haskins for Motherboard
I returned to this 2019 essay this week because I had to go to urgent care on after the silicone tip of a cheap earbud got stuck in my ear (I’m fine; it didn’t even really hurt just didn’t think removing it myself was a good idea). It got me thinking about how the wireless earbud as a concept doesn’t really have anything going for it. It’s nice to have a recent-Haskins and older-Haskins sentence in this week, this essay was the first thing I read by her and it immediately made me want to keep an eye out for her byline. I’m really glad she landed at Wired.
His feed is a fever dream of NutriBullets and vomit-green smoothies, clip-art rats and live-action garbage cans, pure bombast and ego death.
“The One Race That Eric Adams Is Winning”, Tyler Foggatt for The New Yorker
The game is over when you have lost all of your rights.
Instructions to the Apple II game PROTECT YOUR RIGHTS, copyright held by Oklahoma Christian College
Submitted by Andrea.
It is, as you'd expect from that description, highly profitable — and passionately hated by the academics.
The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies
Submitted by Winston.
It’s like an otherwise delightful cocktail with one distinctive unpleasant ingredient, which ingredient was added, deliberately, to imbue the libation with an aftertaste of spite.
“Max Read’s ‘A Literary History of Fake Texts in Apple’s Marketing Materials’”, John Gruber on his blog Daring Fireball
Submitted by Franz. The sentence is really good, though I disagree a bit with the post—unlike Gruber, I don’t think Max was even being that harsh and even if we considered it to be a really cutting text, oh no a blogger made fun of the 3 trillion dollar company’s ad copy seems like small potatoes, generally speaking. Basically I think it’s fine for us lowly peasants to mock the gap between the reality depicted in the king’s tapestries and our day-to-day existence; considering the ongoing plague and the price of turnips going up one must find jest somewhere.
We are all rubber duckers.
“The Revenge of the Rubber Ducky”, Ed William in his newsletter RoughCuts
Submitted by DB.
August, that devil in cargo shorts.
Jerry Wanye Longmire on TikTok
Almost every sentence here is perfect, I think.
This place is made of fascinating tetanus.
Kingfisher & Wombat on Bluesky
Submitted by Dieter.
Hidden in the sprawling portfolio of its life science division, which stood out as a bright spot in an otherwise lackluster quarterly earnings report last week, is the company’s synthetic corpse scent.
“When the Dead Are Missing, These Dogs Know Where to Look”, Sonja Wind for Bloomberg