Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.11.11
Dear friends, I wish I had a banquet of hope to put before you, eleven links of uplifting joy, ways to channel any rage or hurt or despair into thoughtful...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.10.11
Dear friends, This is a good sentence: “Billy ordered a pair of size 9 bananas.” (Billy is Billy Connolly—in this age of supposedly global fame it can be so...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.09.11
Dear friends, There was a truly epic opal in the Dearest newsletter this week; even if you think you don’t care about jewelry (and I put myself in that...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.08.11
Dear friends, Although I love words, I don’t get excited by etymologies—most of them are fairly dull. And a word’s etymology doesn’t (or shouldn’t!) have...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.07.11
Dear friends, Notes and Queries never fails to bring me new and charmingly hyper-specific terms: “But generally a "kneeler" is "a small mat upon which to...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.06.11
Dear friends, This week I was trying to explain to a much younger person what it used to be like before large search engines and abundant online archives—how...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.05.11
Dear friends, It’s a Saturday, so I did some regular weekend cleaning and tidying today, and the whole time kept thinking about Wages Against Housework. I...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.04.11
Dear friends, I wish I could start this email off with a cheery "hello from Point Nemo!" But I can't, because it's the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility and...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.03.11
Dear friends, It's the worst day of the transition to daylight saving time today (US, observed): the first work day after the change. I woke up earwormed...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.02.11
Dear friends, London is a city that rewards the reader. It is all reader fan service, as far as I can tell. Literary references lurk in alleys, lounge in...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.01.11
Dear friends, Hope you enjoyed your second new year today (especially if you went to the burning of the Clavie). I think the practice of following several...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.12.11
Dear friends,Welcome to what is now the traditional December edition of Things I Learned While Looking Up Other Things! Here again is the link to one of my...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.11.11
Dear friends, A long time ago I had a gag website called "November is No New Projects Month" and I think of that every November (no, I'm not doing NaNoWriMo,...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.10.11
Dear friends, I always think of the year as downhill from August, and like anything rolling downhill it accelerates as it goes. I suppose it slams into the...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.09.11
Dear friends, I was lucky enough to visit five really good museums in the last two weeks, so this edition of TILWLUOT might range a bit further afield than...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.08.11
Dear friends, I was lucky enough to see The Mountain Goats the other day here in Portland (and doubly-lucky to be able to do so with my kid). We got there...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.07.11
Dear friends, For a long time I have been trying to find the source of the claim that there was one person in Western history who had read "everything"...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.06.11
Dear friends, I am (gingerly, tentatively, apprehensively, hopefully) traveling soon, to Seoul and Tokyo, and getting ready for the trip is consuming a lot...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.05.11
Dear friends, Would you like to know where to rent a 'big-ass gong'? I didn't think I did, but this post changed my mind. Then I started wondering how much...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.04.11
Dear friends, A nice thing about moving to a new place (and I have found many, many nice things since moving to Portland almost a year ago) is learning about...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.03.11
Dear friends, I did NOT get COVID last month! Whew. I did, however, do a bunch of prophylactic comfort reading, including a few of the novels of Susan...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.02.11
Dear friends, Today I'm in that most modern of purgatories, the time between having been exposed to Covid (and feeling a little iffy, maybe some fatigue, a...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.01.11
Dear friends, Welcome to those of you who signed up via Robin Sloan's 'sletter (note, the olive oil is everything he says and more)! It's at Robin's...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2022.12.11
Dear friends, Welcome to what is now the traditional December edition of Things I Learned While Looking Up Other Things! Here again is the link to one of my...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2022.11.11
Dear friends, Have you dreamed of potatoes lately? (I haven't, but now that I know what they supposedly signify I'm vaguely disappointed.) People always...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2022.10.11
Dear friends, Yesterday was the anniversary of one of my favorite tweets of all time. Some things that fall into the category of "neat thing, but great band...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2022.09.11
Dear friends, Usually I come to this letter with a list of things I joyfully learned while looking up other things; I'm lucky in that I can usually find...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2022.08.11
Dear friends, Just this morning I learned about the cat gap. (Don't worry, I've already pointed out that it's a great band name.) In a moment of idle...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2022.07.11
Dear friends, I'm playing another round of "is it allergies or is it Covid?" today—I've advanced to the league where you go and take a fancier Covid test...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2022.06.11
Dear friends, Today would have been Jacques Cousteau's 112th birthday; his grandson is planning an underwater habitat called Proteus. As far as I can tell,...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2022.05.11
Dear friends, I wish I had some reassuring things to say about the state of the world, but all I have is a set of links. The fact that people are trying to...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2022.04.11
Dear friends, I've been thinking lately that the opposite of curiosity isn't indifference, but dread. If perseverating over vague fears takes up all your...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2022.03.11
Dear friends, If you're not feeling overwhelmed enough, may I suggest a quick turn through the List of ongoing armed conflicts page on Wikipedia? Guaranteed...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2022.02.11
Dear friends, February is the awkward adolescent of months. Everything is the wrong shape; it has holidays that are too important (Valentine's Day) and...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2022.01.11
Dear friends, It feels like the last few weeks have been ones of almost willful unlearning. All the stuff we learned (often the hard way) in 2020 and 2021?...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2021.12.11
Dear friends, A few days ago we celebrated one of my favorite secular holidays, the day that Said The Gramophone posts their favorite songs of the past year....
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2021.11.11
Dear friends, If I asked you 'where do you think the relics of St. Margaret of Scotland are?' and you said "Spain, of course," you'd be right (except nobody...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2021.10.11
Dear friends, In my quest to try every coffee-flavored candy, I did buy the Thanksgiving Dinner candy corn (I only ate a few of the coffee ones, I'm not a...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2021.9.11
Dear friends, This letter, despite being sent on 9/11, contains no 9/11 content. (Although it would be a good day to recommend reading Matt Ruff's amazing...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2021.8.11
Dear friends, I talk about this a LOT (uh, as in the very last instance of this 'sletter), but (again) one of my favorite feelings in the entire world is...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2021.7.11
Dear friends, Well, because things fall apart, center: status: not holding, and so on, what would have been "Free Slurpee Day" today is now some privatopia...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2021.6.11
Dear friends, Although I shouldn't be, I'm always surprised by what legislators think they can ban outright. For example, after the battle of Cannae (216...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2021.5.11
Dear friends, Last week I had shot #2 (with only a tiny bit of Pfizer Phlu afterwards). The hardest part has been having to reset my notions of what would be...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2021.4.11
Dear friends, Mostly what I've been looking up this past month is available vaccination appointments, but luckily my spouse had his first shot this past...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2021.3.11
Dear friends, One of the most unsettling things (to me) is looking up something and finding ... nothing. As more and more is made available online, it...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2021.2.11
Dear friends, I am currently obsessed with Reckonings: Numerals, Cognition, and History, by Stephen Chrisomalis. I mean, maybe you think you don't want books...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2021.1.11
Dear friends, First, because it needs to be said: the problem is white supremacy, and it's everywhere. Googling the phrase "the luxury of attention" I was...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2020.12.11
Dear friends, I should write something about how 2020 has been a long year, with roughly thirty-seven months jammed edgewise into the calendar since March,...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2020.11.11
Dear friends, Because there are fine distinctions in everything, the technical term for holding your breath underwater (without necessarily swimming or...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2020.10.11
Dear friends, I hope yesterday was 10/10 for you. This is the kind of absurdity that making wordlists drives you to: When you are driven to the double...