babies are born worshipping unknown gods
Submitted by Kelsey. This has been memed as an official Dwarf Fortress bug report comment, but the actual bug report does not use this phrase. All credit to Reki!
All that remains today is an unsettling creature better known to us as David Hamburger Helper.
"In Praise of dhh", Filipa Mendonça-Vieira on her blog
A nervous monopolist is a well-behaved monopolist, but we are not the ones making the monopolists nervous any longer.
"The Dance With Big Tech is Different Under Trump", David Karpf for Tech Policy Press
Submitted by Peter.
The day that Roy Orbison died, I got probation instead of jail.
John Darnielle as quoted in a GQ Magazine profile
This profile revealed to me that, humiliatingly, I share a hobby with Lin-Manuel Miranda (making up harmonies to Mountain Goats songs while singing along to them); relatedly, about a year ago I settled on explaining The Mountain Goats to people unfamiliar with the band as "Wario Lin-Manuel Miranda after kicking heroin, minus the rapping." Mind you, I have been a Mountain Goats superfan for 20+ years so this is mostly a cringe self-own. Getting older is in part about embracing the cringe, I suppose.
Another banger, highly relatable sentence from the profile, also from Darnielle:
I was a monster when I was younger, and I don’t mean a lovable monster.
Sometimes I think it’s good that I don’t have a time machine, because I’d probably just use it to go back and punch people.
Erin McKean in her newsletter Things I learned while looking up other things
Submitted by James.
Telescoped down, the hard and stone-green river / cutting fast and direct into the town.
"The Road", Muriel Rukeyser
Lindsay emailed me this poem out of the blue this week, which was very sweet of her. My late dog was best friends with Lindsay's dog, who recently went through radiation treatment for cancer (which went well) and moved to a new neighborhood with a very big park he's enjoying exploring these days.
As decent a little man as ever wore a hat, Mr Dedalus said.
Ulysses, James Joyce
Submitted by Sam.
To those familiar with the Enron mouthfeel, an email concerning Skilling's attempts to set up a motorcycle trip with a former “US Special forces group that does specialized adventure travel” in Costa Rica seems less bizarre than indicative.
"Guys With Spikes", Brendan C. Byrne for Rhizome
But if they can kinda figure it out and, you know, not succumb to fascism, that would be great.
Oscar Isaac in an interview with GQ Magazine
Bodega cats embody the New York spirit: friendly, welcoming, and anti-rat.
Keith Powers as quoted in an article in amNY
Submitted by divya.
There are very few universal truths about the internet, but one thing is certain: Since the very beginning, we have loved watching whales explode.
"The History of Exploding Whales Is the History of the Internet Itself", Andrew Thaler for Vice
Sometimes, down in the subway, a train Maxine’s riding on will slowly be overtaken by a local or an express on the other track, and in the darkness of the tunnel, as the windows of the other train move slowly past, the lighted panels appear one by one, like a series of fortune-telling cards being dealt and slid in front of her.
Bleeding Edge, Thomas Pynchon
Submitted by Birgit. This is maybe my favorite Pynchon novel (I haven't read all of them, admittedly) so this submission was a fun little treat.
(This perverse career move at least provides them with one good joke to start their presentations with.)
"The History of Computing: An Introduction for the Computer Scientist", Thomas Haigh in Using History To Teach Computer Science and Related Disciplines
The context is explaining that many computer historians leave high-paying careers in tech to go be academics, but absent context it is a pretty tantalizing parenthetical.