The sudden invention of phantom procedures is one of the more despicable attempts to disguise my firing as a matter of protocol rather than politics.

"How Gaza Broke the Art World", David Velasco for Equator

"Most quoted on socials" is not always a proxy for perfection, but I saw this sentence referenced a lot on the timelines and it is admittedly very good:

The art world, with all its progressive scaffolding and humanist ornamentation, practically designed to celebrate and aestheticise every rebellion, couldn’t metabolise Palestine.

Also excellent:

My phone, once a conduit for benign distractions, acquires the menacing nimbus of a grenade.

---

The strange stranger bursts through the door at Devore’s Hardware in Monongahela and announces “Behold, I hold in my hand the cause of my shame and misery.”

"UL Listed Conduit Coupling", The Has-Been

Submitted by Natalie, who explains that The Has-Been is a "delightfully cranky railway signaling industry blog", that "endearingly runs on port 9090 and is inaccessible from Canadian IPs or datacenters. Apparently, until recently, the site was only on a dynamic IP, and if you wanted to stay in the loop, somebody would tell you the new IP whenever it changed."

---

I don't know if anyone really likes delivering parcels, deep down.

I Deliver Parcels in Beijing, Hu Anyan (translated by Jack Hargreeves)

Some of the perfection here is contextual. It's a very funny sentence to place about a third of the way into a memoir about delivering parcels.

---

I wonder how different our lives would have been if my parents’ faith was centered on how to live a good life, instead of how to die a dramatic death.

"How To Attend a Funeral", Mike Monteiro in his newsletter Mike Monteiro's Good News

Submitted by Ed.

---

A particular sinking horror intrudes, scaled proportionately to whether the broken thing is a pen or an aortic valve or a marriage.

"Landslide; a ghost story", Erin Kissane on her blog wreckage/salvage

Independently of my selection, Chris submitted these sentences from the same post:

Marginal sensemaking communities—the ones that break the rules meant to keep mismatched frames like theology or mysticism out of zones like scientific inquiry—have always flourished in America, and not only in the discipline of economics.

But accepting that there are gaping holes in my knowledge that my brain hides from me is about as much fun as larping Un Chien Andalou.

---

To Helen of Troy, for example, was attached an adjectival tradition of whoredom already old by the time Homer used it.

Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson

Submitted by Miikka.

---

Satellite imagery is more like news than it is like beans.

personal.md file of potato, a software repository by Charlie Loyd

Charlie is one of the best people I know. I love the care he puts into everything he writes, including documentation of a pansharpening tool.

---

Give me a simple cell from the early days of Earth’s history, and I could never predict that some 4 billion years later it would evolve into a giant rabbit that can punch you in the face.

"The Truth Physics Can No Longer Ignore", Adam Frank for The Atlantic

Submitted by Richard.