The message of sonnet 68 hasn‘t aged at all! On the contrary… Do you think this is Shakespeare's point? The beauty of his poetry cuts through all the shallow artifice? This reading would make the poem's subject the poet himself.

Ordered this second hand OUP copy of Shakespeare's complete sonnets and poems to find someone else's notes to Venus and Adonis. Upon his hurt she looks so steadfastly | that her sight, dazzling, makes the wound seem three

What are we so afraid of when we sit alone with a book?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I vaguely recall an anecdote from Lillian Hellman's account of her life with Dashiell Hammett, that when in frustration she threatened to quit, he said something like, "Go ahead, my dear. No one will notice." A writer writes because a writer has to write.

In a letter in 1810, Hegel criticised the public for favouring utility and convenience in education over intellectual and cultural growth. For Hegel, the spiritual influence (geistig) of studying the Classics transcended practical use, shaping understanding and character in ways unappreciated.

Godot: No longer waiting for the emptiness that never arrives, the embodiment of emptiness is always "here to help". (Claude)

Have you seen Safe (1995) dir. Todd Haynes? Beautiful pace. And the cinematography 🤩Firmly in a Gregory Crewdson/ Jeff Wall mid-90s aesthetic. The protagonist (Julianne Moore) looks directly at the camera several times. No closeups. Always at a distance.

Low-vis is a way to navigate these various platforms too

Liked this short story by Lisa Lang theaccountmagazine.com/article/lang...

Audiobooks are great for long road journeys. Rubbish for thinking. Keep having to stop them during driving. Just to get a moment to absorb what's been said. Or, I just drift in and out, which means not really listening at all. And then rewinding to find out what I've missed.

As people continue to leave Twitter I wanted to tell the story of when I was working as a waiter in a patisserie/café/restaurant in London. Within a month, everyone senior had left, for various reasons, and the boss said to me: "you're in charge now" and tossed me the keys.

Phones are out competing personal contacts pushing young men and women into separate political spaces. www.zeit.de/politik/deut... www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024...

This NYT headline "The Story of Kamala Harris" (and photo) show Harris' relevance comes through understanding a personal journey rather than position or policy. Trump's cast as a powerful figure, while Harris is a 'character' to be understood, a secondary figure. See Alt-text for more photo analysis

This NYT headline and photograph frames Trump's return as imminent, a presidency already prepped for his return. See Alt-text for image analysis.

𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘧 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘴𝘶𝘣𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘵𝘰

Scrolling through NYT headlines. In the Election 2024 section only one headline is solely Harris ("the story of Kamala Harris"). 10 are exclusively Trump. 9 are Harris and Trump. She's presented not as a politician with her own trajectory, but as someone whose relevance is only in relation to his.

It would also be awesome if we had more FT faculty and smaller classes so we could be more present to our students than Chat GPT in those moments of confusion or uncertainty or doubt about the process or purpose of their reading.

We should start touting all English classes as "flipped classrooms" because we ask the students to do the reading first so we can gather together and do the work on it. We could claim we are being innovative even though this is exactly what we have always done. 😉

How can they expect a heart, thumping with ideas, to also compose captions, threads, reels, unique posts day after week, week after day, and for what? For a moment on the timeline, buried before it even breathes.

Despite her later regret and discomfort, the initial “Suchen Sie sich etwas aus, ich bezahle„ is actually moment of radical hospitality. In this moment, she opens herself to the homeless man with an unconditional welcome, without concern for borders, calculations, or judgments of worthiness.

"Suchen Sie sich was aus" 🙈

Eugène Véron

Eugène Véron: Between two paintings of equal merit... the one that soothes and refreshes the soul through the contagion of a truly human emotion [is preferred]. And [the audience] ... will naturally favour the artist whose superior moral sensibility most strongly resonates with their [own] sympathy.

Thomas Mann also said, I can't remember where now, that you need to come down from the ivory tower. It's no good staying up there!

Tolstoy, in What is Art? (1898) said that art is only valid when it is accessible to ordinary people and when it can "infect" the reader with genuine feeling, creating a bond or sense of community between author and reader. (He pinched the term "infect" from Eugène Véron’s L'Esthetique, 1878.)

His article is akin to the 19th-century jeremiads against industrial literature, such as Sainte-Beuve's critique of cheap fiction, dismissing it as a symptom of the ephemeral. But popular success could actually be considered meaningful.

Aimé-Jules Dalou 1838-1902 The Reader 1872 Dalou spent the years 1871-1879 in London. He taught at the South Kensington School of Art and his sculpture was popular with a circle of wealthy patrons. Terracotta #womenreading

Meine persönliche Theorie zum Attentat ist, dass ein Typ Trump erschießen wollte, sich ein Sturmgewehr im Supermarkt gekauft hat, super nah an sein Ziel gekommen ist, weil die Polizei inkompetent ist und dann verfehlt hat, weil zielgenau schießen in der Realität viel schwieriger ist als im Film.

Had to shut down my rodent removal business. No more Mr. Mice Guy.

"The postcolonial experience, that conceives of the world in terms of centre and periphery, and in which success is defined ... not just through “determination and focus”, but through proximity and affinity with the establishment and its institutions." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Strange Horizons is SO CLOSE to reaching their base goal! A magazine publishing some of the most diverse and interesting stories with a distinct SH kind of bent. Please support your favorite magazines :) www.kickstarter.com/projects/str...

Yes, customer service reps may be friendly, even if an unforced role, it's transactional. True friends can handle and perhaps even expect emotional honesty, including anger, wishing the best for each other for the sake of the other. It's a sharing of the self, not the exchange of specific services.

The Atlantic wrote an article about the issues at The Washington Post. Here’s an archived version: archive.is/cvB63

seeing an uptick in "clearly a fetish for getting yelled at" content today, all while it's a sunnier day than usual and the grass beckons. when God speaks to us he does not always whisper

“EmotionCancelling Voice Conversion Engine” is something straight of a sci-fi story. "the voice-altering AI changes the rant of an angry human caller in real time so the person at the other end hears only a softened, innocuous version." A commercially bought ataraxia. on.ft.com/3z4Ymr0

Instagram sent an email on 1 June with a link to apply to opt out. I applied to opt out, and it is difficult. From Meta's privacy policy: "We research for the good of people around the world, for instance to advance technology or to help out in a crisis." 🙄 www.fastcompany.com/91132854/ins...

made a new little film commissioned by #copypress for their #becomingfireflies digital imprint for moving image and spoken word featuring a poem by rumi, from which the film takes its title www.copypress.co.uk/index/becomi... a pictureless film, in the spirit of #lebrasiershelley #derekjarmanblue

I really enjoyed going to see 'The Marvels' tonight. It was enjoyable for two reasons: firstly, it was fun and not overlong; secondly, its unpopularity meant I had the whole cinema to myself on a Saturday night.

Here a renegade sergeant and a second corporal shoot antelope. McCarthy's text describes the sergeant as using a "Vernier" scope, a pop-up rangefinder. Dall.e couldn't get that quite right.

I asked dall.e to create images using text from Cormack McCarthy's Blood Meridian. The Mexican-American War (1846-1848) saw Mexico cede a vast amount of territory to the United States. The poverty, hardship and violence depicted by McCarthy's novel are reflective of the turmoil during this period.

Ordered this second hand OUP copy of Shakespeare's complete sonnets and poems to find someone else's notes to Venus and Adonis. Upon his hurt she looks so steadfastly | that her sight, dazzling, makes the wound seem three

The message of sonnet 68 hasn‘t aged at all! On the contrary… Do you think this is Shakespeare's point? The beauty of his poetry cuts through all the shallow artifice? This reading would make the poem's subject the poet himself.

I think I'm a traditionalist who argues for the inherent value of text-based reading, because I always tell students to go to the library ...