In fairness to Kneecap and Sally Rooney, if I had to embroil myself in a battle of wits with a world leader, I’d probably pick Keir Starmer too.

“Surrealing in the Years: Starmer has chosen the wrong opponent in Sally Rooney”, Carl Kinsella for The Journal

Like all things tech, I have purposely decided not to learn much about AI, but this week I decided to dip my toe in, and wrote this as a memorial to the brain cells lost.

Another fact: Kincaid hates England.

“The Evolution of a Beloved Postcolonial Critic and Literary Giant”, Mychal Denzel Smith for The New Republic

Monopoly men fight for the privilege to spy on us and rob us blind.

An update: this newsletter just hit the “over 1,000 subscribers” mark (welcome, new readers!). This is flattering, but also means that now I have to pay Buttondown $29 a month. Luckily I’m not fully out of pocket for this, thanks to the generous paying subscribers whose support means that I am already at the almost-break-even point. If you are able to contribute to make this newsletter fully break-even (links to do so in footer) it’s appreciated but not required.

But editorial indulgence has resulted in such a sludge of footnotes and block quotes that the eye must often dismount and continue on foot.

“Zero Tolerance”, Andrea Long Chu for New York Magazine

Sort of a shorter sentence collection this week. I’m going upstate on Wednesday partly for a weirdo art thing organized by some friends and partly for dissertation work, so next week will probably be largely submissions-driven.

In geologic time, all infrastructures suffer an Ozymandian fate.

The Marvelous Clouds: Towards a Philosophy of Elemental Media, John Durham Peters

Syntax buckles beneath the pressure of empty stomachs.

“Beneath the Howl of Hunger”, Alaa Alqaisi for ArabLit Quarterly

Quartz is lovely, translucent, and pure but, frankly, a little inarticulate.

All smiles have become archaic.

“The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”, Ursula K. Le Guin

Submitted by Wesley.

Besides the bygone stairway to hog heaven, the scans also revealed the foundation of what was once a soap factory.

“Ghost stairs and pig bones sit in the way of new NYC train tunnel”, Stephen Nessen for Gothamist

Incredible headline, also.

What were you doing the day the president attended the opening of an American concentration camp in the Everglades?

“The Grand Opening of an American Concentration Camp”, Melissa Gira Grant for The New Republic

I wish I could say I was doing something appropriately solemn on the day of the opening of an American concentration camp in the Everglades. But the main things I did were go to CVS to pick up a prescription and hem a jumpsuit in preparation for going out of town for a July 5 wedding—a wedding in Miami, actually, not that long of a drive away from the concentration camp, but it seemed bad form to propose a protest excursion to my naturalized citizen Lebanese in-laws who’d come all the way from Beirut to see a nephew get married.

The Lebanese side of the family was outnumbered at the wedding by University of Miami alumni. The nephew had attended the school on a football scholarship and then stayed for law school, and was marrying a former team cheerleader. The father of the bride gave a toast composed entirely of football metaphors and the DJ played “Mr. Brightside”, which I think is a contender for the white millennial wedding version of “Sweet Caroline.” I didn’t really expect anyone giving speeches or making small talk to acknowledge the concentration camp, but that didn’t make it less weird to note its conversational absence.

Thanks to the many excellent submitters this week, with special thanks to MVP submitter Wesley.

In a universe in equilibrium we would simply not exist as thinking and feeling beings.

White Holes, Carlo Rovelli

And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole edifice of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack.

Discourse on Colonialism, Aimé Césaire

Submitted by Erin, via the “imperial boomerang” Wikipedia entry.

I'm going to be in the Bay Area June 17-27 to do dissertation interviews, which will likely reduce my time to do perfect sentence collecting. Submissions strongly encouraged in the coming days.

They belonged to a race quite capable of admiring its own image in a mirror, and equally capable of cutting its own throat before the altar of some tribal god, such as the deity of Daily Shaving.

A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter Miller

Several weeks ago, much to my extreme displeasure, I found myself at Erewhon, staring balefully at an $88 jar of electric blue sea moss gel.

“Nowhere, Man”, Anna Merlan for Flaming Hydra

I could only hope that future historians would get it right: whatever came next in the wreckage of empire, the $20 strawberry was not to blame.

It’s to stand aboveground and pontificate about the marvels of this bright new magic, to be dazzled by all its flickering, glittering glory, its smooth mirages and six-fingered messiahs, its apparent obsequiousness in response to all your commands, right up until the point when a sinkhole opens up and swallows you whole.

“Toolmen”, Mandy Brown on her blog A Working Library

This was the time when the mythic achievements of the conquest were blown like glass from the glory hole of the Queen’s will.

If something is telling me to change my life and that something is not Rainer Maria Rilke, my nose for bullshit is automatically activated.

“against the fleeing to europe industrial complex”, Kate Wagner in her newsletter The Late Review

Submitted by Erin.

The Cheesecake Factory: A bacchanalian multiverse where the splendor of Rome meets the appetite of America.

TikTok by Jonathan Kite

Kite's main bit on TikTok is the most spot-on Anthony Bourdain impression you'll ever see, and he never disappoints.

This struggle is sweeter than a life without dignity.

Mahmoud Khalil in a letter to his son, published in The Guardian

I was destined to become the eternal museum viewer.

A bad week of reading for me (sick, then preoccupied with dogsitting a very active pup) but a very good week of submissions. Thanks, submitters.

"Irrespective of their age, they were able to get a lot of ants," he told Reuters.

“Four people, including two Belgian teens, plead guilty to trafficking giant ants in Kenya”, Reuters via ABC News

As a belated Indie Bookstore Day gesture, book links in this newsletter are to my neighborhood store.

THE GARDEN IS AN OASIS FROM THE MALICE OF OUR TIME.

A note left on the fence of a neighborhood community garden

It says that the only way to enjoy art is in knowing that it is hurting somebody.

“A.I.: The New Aesthetics of Fascism”, Gareth Watkins for New Socialist

Submitted by Moon.

Haggis pakora has been described as a "highly improbable Indo-Caledonian alliance making use of the Scots' most potent culinary weapons: sheep pluck (heart, liver and lungs) and deep-fat frying."

Wikipedia entry for haggis pakora

Submitted by Chris.