A correction: in Perfect Sentences 172 I mistakenly attributed a sentence submitted by Joe to Closing Time by Joseph Heller. It was in A Right to Be Merry by Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C. We regret the error.
Voice has no relationship to becoming rock, so the earth cannot remember it.
"Fossil Songs", Laura Marris for The Believer
Better to sink it properly in a place where it’ll do good than have it just go down with toxic craziness.
Harris Moore as quoted in an article in The City
Submitted by Natalie.
As acts of deterrence these stories carry their own kind of thrill—at the inside edge where her words go missing, a sort of antipoem that condenses everything you ever wanted her to write—but they cannot be called texts of Sappho’s and so they are not included in this translation.
If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, Anne Carson
Via the article in The Believer above.
He told the justices he'd mistakenly uploaded a working draft from a computer that subsequently malfunctioned, and he denied he'd used AI.
"Penalties stack up as AI spreads through the legal system", Martin Kaste for NPR
Submitted by Andrea.
In the name of Allah the Merciful, the mujahedeen are asked to let this vehicle transporting cement from the Lafarge plant pass through checkpoints, following an agreement with the company for the trade of this material.
Travel document used by Lafarge drivers in Syria, as referenced in The New York Times
This solipsistic periscope formed the basis of all that was to come.
Exhalation, Ted Chiang
Submitted by Wesley.
This will be a dank, sunless place, one where panic and capital feed on each other like twins in the womb of a hulking, unknowable monster—a monster known by many names, but which I like to call modern-day America.
"At Long Last, InfoWars Is Ours", Bryce P. Tetraheder for InfoWars
Many congratulations to my studiomate Jamie who has been involved in some behind the scenes work with this endeavor.
As epiphanies go, this one's a little bloodier than most, which is how you know it's legit.
This Year: 365 Songs, Annotated, John Darnielle
If the Gothic tradition of fear teaches us that the ruins of the past haunt the present, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon offers the inverse: a present so forcefully flattened, so aggressively “fun,” that it has exorcised history entirely, leaving us trapped in a sterile, eternal loop of viral games and celebrity lip-syncing while the world slides into climate collapse and fascist politics.
"The Banal Horror of Jimmy Fallon", Jon Greenaway for Current Affairs
Submitted by Angela.
For the last 20 years, employees could accept the intense external criticism and awkward conversations with family and friends about working for a company named after J. R. R. Tolkien’s corrupting all-seeing orb.
"Palantir Employees Are Starting to Wonder if They’re the Bad Guys", Makena Kelly for Wired
I coveted cars then as I covet houses now; both as a symbol and as a tangible reality of safety, of containment, of finally being real in this velveteen rabbit-ass millennial life.
"Odes: The Car", Meg Elison in her newsletter Letters from Meg
Submitted by Chris.
I hate to essentialize the Swedes, but this is the hell IKEA would design.
"JUST BE HAPPY", John Paul Brammer in his newsletter
A barracuda to the radiantly outlandish and absurd, he was always in for the makings of a good time and a good story.
"My Father's Shadow", Lauren Markham for The Believer
And low it came to pass that the Lord was disappointed in his children on the 7:03 Acela to Boston, and so he did decide to punish them with a plague of Bros going to a bachelor party, who boarded at Stamford, and proceeded to inflict their loudness and drinking upon the people, who were humbled
Submitted by Natalie.
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