A minor housekeeping note for submissions: I'm trying out receiving newsletter replies in the Buttondown interface to avoid losing track of submissions in my general-email inbox. This sort of works, except that it only displays email addresses and not display names. If I'm sent messages without a signature I can deduce the name through various methods (firstname.lastname email addresses, email addresses tied to specific websites that I can check, paying subscribers whose info I can look up in Stripe), but that doesn't cover all cases. If you are unsure whether I can piece it together and are submitting by responding to the newsletter, just let me know how you'd like to be credited.
Each Christmas my grandmother gave me a set of gloves and a ski mask / as if to suggest that I begin robbing convenience stores.
"The High Numbers", David Berman in The Believer
For too long, those fluent in the good grammar of civility have deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty.
Zohran Mamdani's inauguration speech
I lost feeling in most of my extremities watching this speech on a big screen on Broadway in frigid cold, but it was worth it.
It’s a reminder that as bad as things seem sometimes here on Earth, at least our planet hasn’t been violently ejected from the solar system to drift endlessly in the dark.
"Scientists Discover One of the World’s Oldest Cremations", Emmanuel Maiberg in the newsletter The Abstract for 404 Media
Submitted by Ed.
That stone for you is an intellectual effort.
Mahmoud Darwish, as quoted in Giving voice to stones : place and identity in Palestinian literature, Barbara Parmenter
Encountered in an epigraph in Andrew Ross' Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel.
Anyone who thinks they’re better than a rock should be turned into one—then they would find out they’re not that special, and they could finally be happy.
Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, Tyson Yunkaporta
Submitted by cypress.
And like the god trick, this eye fucks the world to make techno-monsters.
"Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective", Donna Haraway
Re-read this while working on my dissertation defense presentation. Donna Haraway sure loves a dense ass paragraph peppered with zingers!
Exception for people with nib grinding appointments before 9 am.
Notice in the schedule of the 2026 San Francisco Pen Show
Submitted by Cassidy.
many angry posts should have been naps or little packets of crackers
A civilized society does not heap furry sex memes on top of a grave.
"Killing in the name of...nothing", Sarah Jeong for The Verge
You have the feeling that all the most beautiful, most French chords have wandered out of their cages at the classical zoo and, somewhat sedated, are now roaming free across the plains of art with no apparent agenda.
"Satie's Spell", Jeremy Denk for the New York Review of Books
Submitted by Dan.
then he got insanely surpassed
Mike Fossey on Twitter
Via Luke O'Neil's in memoriam for Fossey, for Flaming Hydra.
It was a bit like I was idly playing a “brain teaser” puzzle, and a bit like my brains were oozing out of my ears.
"This Life Gives You Nothing", Jonah Weiner in the newsletter Blackbird Spyplane
Technology is the active human interface with the material world.
"A Rant About Technology", Ursula K. Le Guin on her blog
Submitted by Kieffer 12 days ago but I missed it.
I have it on good authority that next year so many female celebrities will have their arms and legs amputated that the Met Gala will look like a bunch of sparkly jellybeans rolling around on a movie theater floor.
"The Anti-Cosmetic Surgery Essay Every Woman Should Read", father_karine for her eponymous newsletter
You just read issue #158 of Perfect Sentences. You can also browse the full archives of this newsletter.
