A spare collection of sentences this week. Much of last weekend and this past week were devoted to mailing out the new edition of Networks of New York. Self-publishing always sounds like a great idea until you have hundreds of pre-orders to pack up and mail and find yourself constantly running out of packing tape and spare cycles (many thanks to the friends who showed up to help me pack most of the orders up last weekend).

Some other big stressful life stuff (some good, some less good, all basically manageable) also cut into reading time. Fall is such a frenetic season. Everyone and everything seems to be doing the absolute most in advance of winter setting in and the world becoming altogether too cold and dark and grim for new projects or baseline functionality.

I'm doing some walking tours on the occasion of the book's release next weekend; one at Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria on October 10 and one at Pioneer Works in Red Hook on October 11. One in Manhattan with Rhizome tentatively for November, route TBD.

It’s true that I know at least four guys named Dave and none named Bank of America.

"Paid Phones", Daniel Kolitz for The Baffler

Using a subway ad to sell an AI trading agent to an “executive commuter” is like killing an ant with a shotgun.

The absence of Annie Dillard sentences in this edition comes from the fact I was out of town and did not have access to my copies of her books. Most of you have probably run into the "give it away" sentence at this point in remembrances of her (a good line, but not even my favorite from her). Dillard's work taught me so much about appreciating sentences and the work of crafting them. I hope you go read some of her work in the coming days.

But those felt like accidents, in a life next door to mine.

"Annie Dillard and the Writing Life", Alexander Chee for The Morning News

In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday’s slaughter, they were not cowards.

Susan Sontag's contribution to Talk of the Town the week after 9/11 for The New Yorker

Everyone should have a museum dedicated to the worst day of their life and be forced to attend it with a bunch of tourists from Denmark.

By this point in your life, you have probably reached a decision on whether you find it enjoyable to watch movies in which people get eviscerated with a chain saw.

Review of Onslaught by Kyle Smith in The Wall Street Journal

See also: men jealous of babies.

This is in the For The Demons folder inside a subfolder named "Incomplete Demons."

This Year: 365 Songs Annotated, John Darnielle

I make a great play of consonants.

If all goes well, "BuzzBallz is turning two Pop-Tarts flavors into cocktails" will be the worst thing you hear all day.

"Everything is computer", Andrew Womack for the newsletter The Morning News

Submitted by Travis.

I've seen an uptick in subscribers recently coming from...search? Like, DuckDuckGo and Bing as the referral URL. This seems unlikely; I don't even know what search result or AI summary would bring up this newsletter. Apologies if some malign AI signed you up for this without your consent, new readers.

Bittersweetness is the governing tone as you age.

John Darnielle in an interview with Under the Radar

You read the role like a horny snake in a newspaper cartoon.

Oh, Mary!, Cole Escola

A sentence that in theory I could have shared a year ago when I saw the play during the Titus Burgess run, but I didn't remember to at that time. We saw Meg Stalter in the title role this week, which was a delight.

Hello to the new subscribers who recently joined because of Robin, whose continued championing of this newsletter is very appreciated.

I want computer to work on hair.

Andrés Cuervo giving a talk at Brooklyn Web Workers

A correction: last week I got Alex Sujong Laughlin's name wrong. Many regrets for the error.

A baby, absolutely shellacked with drool, tried to befriend the puppet.

"Getting Off With the Luddites", Sarah Thankam Mathews for n+1

Thanks to submitters for carrying this week's entry, it has been a very distracted week for me.

Raising awareness is the donor-facing euphemism for freaking out as many people as possible without affecting material conditions.

"Dodging evitable futures, together", Mule Design newsletter

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of a blank check from the Paypal Mafia must be in want of a coterie of sycophants.

"Over Leveraged", Rusty Foster in his newsletter Today in Tabs

Saga also submitted this from the same newsletter entry:

Otherwise, they discovered nothing of value despite more than a decade of driving each other crazy with endless white papers about energy demons.

It is summer in America and everyone is pushing the limit on how long the forces at work that are bigger than us can be ignored.

"It’s Only An Island If You Look At It From The Water", Elizabeth Cantwell for Bright Wall/Dark Room

Operating 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, it was, in essence, a 76,000-square-foot artificial wound.

Please killer whales, save the day with murder

Rubalee, book by Javier Antonio González

It probably helps to know this sentence was sung, not spoken. Theo and I saw a workshop production of the first act of this musical back in 2023 at the recommendation of an old friend who no longer lives in New York and is friends with the theater company developing it. It's about whales, as in the main character is a North Atlantic right whale. Last week the same old friend forwarded an email announcing a reading of the full show at Pregones/PRTT, forgetting she'd sent me to the workshop years ago, so Theo and I decided to go see how it had progressed. And, well, the second half has killer whales who (spoiler, sorry) serve as a kind of cetus ex machina for the finale.

Apologies for the light self-promotion: back in 2016 I published a book with Melville House about internet infrastructure in New York City. The book went out of print, I got the rights back earlier this year, and I'm self-publishing a revised edition for 2026, for release in September. It's available for pre-order now at this link. Happy to share a discount code with subscribers if they want one (or do partial refunds to subscribers who've already pre-ordered), and buyers outside the USA also should message me if they need shipping comped because of tariffs.

Feathers also have a much wider variety of tools to make color.

"Where to Find the Colors Your Screen Can’t Show You", Ryan Moulton on his blog

Build a house from sticks and mud / listen to the poison singing in your blood

This Year: 365 Songs Annotated, John Darnielle

It's pretty funny that the best summary of the John Darnielle theory of songwriting (not to mention best summary of the unique flavor of mental illness common to Mountain Goats fans) is a lyric in an unreleased song. This week I purchased tickets to every night of The Mountain Goats' November San Francisco residency ; financially this was probably unwise but I've had a rough last few weeks and sometimes the only thing standing between yourself and the siren song of wanting to check out from life entirely is knowing that you just have to get through the next four months and then you can get on a plane and go see your favorite band six nights in a row.

The town that hosts the world’s largest convenience store smells like ass.

"Leave it to Beaver", Forrest Wilder for The Baffler

this man had the pleasure of nothing, besides his own importance

There was a big jump in subscribers over the past week, I think because Daniel Pink highlighted Perfect Sentences in his newsletter. Hello new readers, hope you have a nice time and thanks Daniel Pink, who I've never met and I didn't know was a subscriber.

The waiting room across the hall / was filled with hostile stepsons.

"From Cantos for James Michener: Part II", David Berman

The homeland arrived pre-plated and compliant with state health codes.

"Empire Loves a Dark Sky", Mohamad Naleh for Places Journal

Amazon has since removed the Weirdo and sand tray from sale and said it was investigating the gorillas.