Despite the usefulness of his calculations, Bailey did not qualify the years of hardship represented in each delicious fruit.

"The First Green Revolution: Debt Peonage and the Making of the Nitrogen Fertilizer Trade, 1840–1930", Edward D. Melillo

A great city is the most mighty of dung-makers.

Les Misérables, Victor Hugo

Encountered via the Melillo article. Seems a pity that the musical adaptation of this novel doesn't have a diversion into lamenting the transition to industrial agriculture importing fertilizers from abroad rather than utilizing all the manure produced by people in cities. Do you smell the people's shit, etc.

You only have to imagine Freddy Mercury in his signature pose, with a third leg extruding from his back, to imagine how four different atoms are connected to carbon.

"Mirror Images: On the Search for Asymmetry", Dimitra Demertzi in Life Beyond Us: An Original Anthology of SF Stories and Science Essays

Submitted by Ranjit.

But Munch has shown the capacity for fairness and mercy, and his 500-year journey from Wales to chili night is rooted in humility.

"Fargo Season 5 Finale Recap", Scott Tobias for the New York Times

I don't watch Fargo, I just read a lot of TV recaps when I'm procrastinating. TV recaps were kind of my gateway into the concept of media criticism and the art of taking the lowbrow seriously, if I'm being honest. Anyway, this feels like a sentence the author probably had a lot of fun writing.

Being on a plane is like a death flavored experience.

Lucy Dacus in a video of a boygenius interview

Seen in an IG reel supercut of "boygenius being unhinged." This statement, honestly, feels perfectly hinged to me.

It was a season of death in a year of death in a culture bent on ignoring death, within a national body politic that was consumed with the gobbling up of itself by a death cult called oil, capitalism and empire.

The Last Fire Season, Manjula Martin

I encountered this sentence in a Bluesky post from Rahawa, but it was compelling enough to get me to purchase the book.

Ah, yes, of course—one of those druid passwords, for your druid email account.

"Very Ordinary Men", Sam Kriss for The Point

There is a brief aside in this essay mocking Isaacson's biography of Albert Einstein in which Kriss expresses annoyance at the author harping on the Bern patent office's proximity to the city clock tower, which suggest to me that Isaacson did a piss-poor job of ripping off Peter Galison.

As it turns out, the DoD isn’t pumping out penises.

"The Total Package", Britt H. Young for The Baffler

Submitted by Javier.