This was not an especially adept reading week for me because I was at a conference and conference brain does not lend itself to a lot of close reading. Thanks to people who sent submissions!
A situation called scrotum catastrophe, in which the entire population of the empire ends up enclosed in a transparent pouch, in a situation of theoretical stalemate and of grave physical and psychic discomfort.
"On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1", Umberto Eco in the collection How to Travel With a Salmon and Other Essays
Submitted by Matthew.
But its path is no longer decided only by rain, soil, and gravity; it is also negotiated in meeting rooms, investment contracts, and zoning maps.
"Reengineering the Valley: A History of Water and People in Việt Nam", Ngọc Nâu for The Funambulist
The presence of a well-tempered clavier implies the existence of claviers that are absolutely feral, barely able to contain their immense power, waiting for any excuse to burst out into the wildest ride you've ever heard
So maybe, brain fry is the 2026 version of railway spine?
"Gas Town and Bullet Hell", Matt Jones on his blog Petafloptimism
Submitted by Thom.
By the time the paper was published, Cohler was no longer employed by MIT, even as a clarinet instructor.
"A clarinetist, a high school student, and four climate deniers write a science paper, with a little help from AI…", Jessica McKenzie for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Las Vegas struck me as a monument to a truth that America once knew and had somehow chosen to forget: If gambling had to be legal, it should be contained to remote cities in the desert that make you feel a little bad about yourself.
"Sucker", McKay Coppins in The Atlantic
Submitted by Kerri.
And she says, “Nope. Rat bees.”
I can see the naysayers pointing out that there are two sentences in the quotation and does this qualify as "a" sentence and to them I say: rat bees!!
For Alexeyeva, reading was a contact sport; her underlining and marginal notes "made each page look like a battlefield."
To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement, Benjamin Nathans
Submitted by Lex.
Everyone said too much and said it poorly.
"I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore", Dan Nosowitz for New York Magazine
How in the world did this case of dactylic hexameter come to me?
The Mind's I : fantasies and reflections on self and soul, Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett
Submitted by Joe. Markdown/Buttondown’s editing interface really didn't know how to deal with italics in-word so this kind of looks like garbage, unfortunately.
The gimmick is thus capitalism’s most successful aesthetic category but also its biggest embarrassment and structural problem.
Theory of the Gimmick, Sianne Ngai
Encountered via Michael Lutz on Bluesky.
My daughter’s mirth now utterly extinguished, she had the expression I imagine Jean-Paul Sartre’s daughter must have had every day.
"How to Want Less", Arthur C. Brooks for The Atlantic
Submitted by George.
I did not arrive on the land with a grand idea.
"Ending Well and the Records We Make Along the Way", Courage Dzidula Kpodo for The Funambulist
It is not an elaborate or rare sentence, but as an opening sentence to an essay it's very good. Sometimes the simplicity is the point.
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