A shorter entry this week, though I've realized that over the last year this newsletter has gotten longer and longer as submissions have become more frequent.

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[Disclosure: Prior to his election, the author was Councilor Green’s DM in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign.]

"How to tear gas children", Sarah Jeong for The Verge

The story itself is important and well-reported and I apologize for uplifting what may seem to be the least important part of the text but also, it is a great sentence.

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Beware, you are surrounded by literature.

English translation of a sign at the National Museum of Taiwan Literature

Submitted by Mars, found via RedNote.

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On an early morning in February 2023 I entered the cavernous lobby of Three World Trade Center, a thousand-foot glass spreadsheet erected in downtown Manhattan in the aftermath of 9/11.

"Onboarding", Juliette Cezzar for Bungalow

I enjoy the description of a building as a spreadsheet because it is evocative of both the role of such architecture as containers for capital and their own status as capital assets. Recently I have been thinking about how it is incorrect to describe data centers as the "first" architecture not designed for humans. For one thing, highways and telephone exchanges of the 1970s have them beat by a few decades. For another, the financialization of space and shelter has produced plenty of antihuman design choices, like the millennial sad beige aesthetic and the absence of benches at Moynihan Train Hall.

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The text leans less on male gaze and more on male deep-penetrating radar.

"Death and Destruction!", James Nicoll's blog James Nicoll Reviews

Submitted by Erin.

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In the mundane course of modern life, you might occasionally find yourself glimpsing the dark abyss — that is, catching a few seconds of a stranger’s phone screen.

"Welcome to Desocialized Media", John Herrmann for New York

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He then thrust out his hand, and, grasping that of his new foe, bedewed it unmercifully.

Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope

Submitted by Christine with the commentary "This whole novel seems to be about squabbling among English clergymen, and it’s just one pettiness after another. It’s great. This obsession with the clammy hands of the main antagonist sets the tone."

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Of course they will say that they have duplicates in Paris (the pleasures of centralisation!), that there could have been human victims, and that it is a cowardly attack (the more one risks one’s life and one’s freedom, the more one is a coward... of course!).

CLODO Second Communique, translated from French by unnamed translator

The parentheticals give a nice rhythm to this sentence. Even without the mention of Paris I think it would be obvious this was translated from French just from the phrasing and rhythm.