It really is the greatest business plan in the history of capitalism: “We will create God and then ask it for money.”
"OpenAI Has a Business Plann", Matt Levine for Bloomberg
Submitted by Wesley.
Mother Nature doesn't call, doesn't speak to you, although a glacier eventually farts.
"The Minnesota Declaration", Werner Herzog
Everything's a sphere if you polish it enough.
Cameron Kunzelman on the podcast Shelved by Genre
Submitted by Sam.
Ha ha, bitches, I got a new scooter!
Clifford “Buzz” Grambo as quoted in an article in Mother Jones
A veteran named Buzz Grambo riding around on a scooter harassing ICE agents in Baltimore is deeply Baltimore in a way that I'm not sure how to explain. I mean, "Clifford Grambo, but everyone calls me Buzz" does sound like a character in a John Waters movie, but it's more than that.
I felt like I was chasing a mischievous ghost haunting my pelvis, always opening and shutting cabinets and doors and giggling from down the hall.
"The Pelvic Floor Is a Problem", Casey Johnston for Wired
Submitted by Jillian.
For a movie called “The Bride of Frankenstein,” the film surely doesn’t give a single warm shit about the titular character or how she feels about becoming a Bride.
"The Repulsive Romanticization of ‘The Bride’ of Frankenstein’s Monster", BJ Colangelo on Medium
Submitted by Mariona.
I wanted them to be like the flushes of mushrooms that come up after a rain: an over-the-top bounty; a temptation to explore; an always too many.
The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
Admittedly goes a bit hard on the semicolons, but I think they support the energy of "always too many" pretty well here. I returned to this book again as I worked on revising the conclusion to my dissertation, because Tsing is pretty good at looking at the wreck of capitalism and keeping the vibes pretty light. I have been struggling against feedback from my advisor that seems to want my dissertation to end on an upbeat note that I simply cannot muster (to be fair: it's 2025, look around).
This prose hit purple still accelerating hard and got well into the ultraviolet before NORAD tracking stations lost contact with it.
"ZZ Flop", Rusty Foster for his newsletter Today in Tabs
Submitted by Saga.
But there is a rich if neglected tradition exploring the questions of identity, agency, love, and lust in the context of parasitic brainworms.
"The Only Olivia Nuzzi-RFK Jr. Take You Need to Read", Nick Pinto for Hell Gate
Like Rusty, I struggled to really take in this whole piece but appreciated its commitment to the bit.
The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run.
Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
Via the Moby-Dick bot on Bluesky.
When Chuck Grassley was born in 1933, Hitler and Stalin were both still alive, and the chocolate chip cookie had not yet been invented.
"Only a Failing System Could Produce Chuck Grassley", Alex Skopic for Current Affairs
Submitted by Nick.
The cells smelled like canned tomato soup.
"A Battle With My Blood", Tatiana Schlossberg for The New Yorker
There are more emotionally riveting, more poignant sentences in this essay but this one is so evocative and scene-setting. Such a visceral yet mundane detail of a harrowing experience.
A minor vanity: Tatiana Schlossberg wrote very kindly about my 2015 reporting for The Atlantic in her book Inconspicuous Consumption, which meant a great deal to me as a writer with a far less impressive resume. I really hope I get to thank her someday, sooner than later.
As they realised themselves in varying degrees, few people alive at the time were more delightful, more ingenious, more movingly lovely, and, as it might happen, more savage, than the girls of slender means.
The Girls Of Slender Means, Muriel Spark
Submitted by Chris.
Nature states no 'facts': these come only within statements devised by human beings to refer to the seamless web of actuality around them.
Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the World, Walter Ong
Submitted by SR.
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