I don't love that numbering this newsletter means I now know there are 12 weeks left in the year, but it's nice to have stuck with it this long. (Sorry I reminded you there are 12 weeks left in the year.)
Skepticism has an ancient pedigree; it corrodes complacency and convention, and for that reason alone the skeptic who makes life so awkward for the securely institutionalized practitioner should be cherished like the most maddening of mad uncles in a well-knit family.
"Here and Everywhere: Sociology of Scientific Knowledge", Steven Shapin
The history of objects in the Universe can be seen as a history of condensations of composite objects from an undifferentiated background.
"All Objects and Some Questions, Charles H. Lineweaver and Vihan M. Patel
Submitted by v.
You sound like the mailman in a town where everyone's a bear
tweet by @weedguy420boner (account now locked), 2016
Encountered in a screenshot via Bluesky, specifically it's a sick burn on former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley's dumb (per the author, "children's book ass") name. It's probably "mailman" that sends this over the top for me.
Released in an era when every movie with an aura of weirdness seemed destined to pick up some kind of following, All This and World War II has remained a cult film in search of cult.
"‘All This and World War II’: The Beatles Movie Nobody Asked For, Nobody Saw and Nobody Remembers", Keith Phipps for The Reveal
Melissa had submitted an unbelievably good two-sentence combo from this, which was so good I almost ignored the "only one sentence" rule we've generally been holding steady in this newsletter. I mean, come on:
Hitler makes several more appearances. Early in the film he’s accompanied by Helen Reddy’s “Fool on the Hill.”
“Predictably Irrational,” which was published in 2008, was an instant airport-book classic, and augured an extraordinarily successful career for Ariely as an enigmatic swami of the but-actually circuit.
"They Studied Dishonesty. Was Their Work a Lie?", Gideon Lewis-Krauss for The New Yorker
Submitted by Keith.
Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.
Pattern Recognition, William Gibson
A familiar classic, via Chris posting an excerpt on Bluesky.
One of my favorite activities is identifying and giving extremely good gifts; one of the best gifts I've ever pulled off was a signed ARC of Pattern Recognition for a friend. It's stupid and sentimental of me, but I think sometimes about the expression on that friend's face when they flipped through and saw Gibson's signature and understood that I'd gone out of my way to find this weird little treasure for them, just because.
At the same time, I do think Pattern Recognition and the Blue Ant books as a whole did some unfortunate damage insofar as a lot of white women of means misunderstood Cayce Pollard's jet-setting, conflicted-complicity lifestyle to be aspirational rather than a dissociative coping strategy that ultimately contributes more harm than she can possibly repair once she gets out of the game. I don't entirely love where Milgrim ends up in the trilogy, but I found him a lot more relatable.