An episode where some of the best comments came in the extra time. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i...

It’s not a complete surprise given the internal differences between TMWMHWFH and his later works. This interview with Rachel Aviv does add to her article, including a reminder of Sacks’s intense feeling of being unlovable—which I’d guess came from his parents. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/u...

“The school appeared in Iranian business listings. It was visible on Google Maps. A search engine could have found it. Nobody searched. At 1,000 decisions an hour, nobody was going to.”

“If they do not bid and win the job, their life points diminish faster than if they get the job. I tell them the team that survives the longest wins. And off they go. Most of the time, they get so caught up in the competition they all starve at the same time and the game ends without a winner.”

A new study published earlier this month in Geophysical Research Letters reveals how the tips of tree leaves burn with ghostly, ultraviolet sparks. These phenomena, known as coronas, had never been seen in nature—until now. 🌿 spklr.io/6042DI2EC 📸: William Brune

An incredible country run by extremely normal people

“… something like Joan Didion’s ‘magical thinking’—not, as in Didion’s case, an individual response to personal trauma, but rather a collective manifestation of shock as the familiar contours of Soviet life suddenly dissolved.”

A good explainer of why the Moon’s origin is still unexplained. youtu.be/ghW7BEC0byg

I see Vermeule is once again doing the rounds. And so also once again I regret he is not living his best life in the Falangist paradise he wishes for most of the rest of us, viz, as an illiterate goat-herder on some hillside in 18th century Extremadura.

I found it moving to learn today that my father and I, for all our differences, both really liked The Secret Agent and especially Wagner Moura’s masterful performance. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/m...

It occurs to me that hospitals here run like families where everyone is obeying directives left by largely absent fathers. Their directives are usually benign, but the doctors have very limited knowledge of their patients (who are effectively helpless children).

Harriet Taylor Mill officially recognised as co-author of 'On Liberty'! dailynous.com/2026/03/19/o...

Speaking on the phone with primary care “office” (most likely in India), followed by insurance physician group (possibly in Asia), elevated my heart rate sufficiently to summon my nurse to check on me.

John Lee Hooker with a diagram of the evolution of the Blues.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, New York.

Only my father would cheerfully chat up both a confused cardiac surgery patient in Spanish, then a few minutes later, talk hallucinogen use at raves with a hospital janitor.

There is a man on this hall who is confused that he is in a hospital. There seems to be at least one person like this within earshot at every hospital visit. Naturally, he is now singing, badly.

Morning accomplishment

The goddess Athena herself would have coveted this stirrup-spout bottle in the shape of an owl. Created thousands of miles across the ocean from Greece, this bottle is typical of the work of Moche ceramicists of Peru’s North Coast. #MetMuseum 🏺 1/ 200-500 CE. 📸 me

Making blood-draw small talk with a nurse in her early 60s at a big city hospital yesterday, she asked me how many Covid shots I’d gotten. I said, truthfully, around 6, I’d lost track. She said, muttering in a disapproving tone like my grandmother, “too many.” 1/3

Probably a three-way tie with The Secret Agent & Sentimental Value as my favorite 2025 Best Picture nominee. A pity it most likely won’t win anything on Sunday, but it’s a fine Adaptation of a superb novella.

Shortly before his death, Camus had a production deal to film a one-man dramatization of La Chute for television, starring himself as Clamence.

Back in a familiar locale.

“He thought he’d better be up and doing things so as not to sigh quite as much.” (Denis Johnson)

oh wow really no way?!

“An overcrowded world is the ideal place in which to be lonely.”

Pegasus striking his hoof on the ground of Mount Helicon and creating the Hippocrene BL Royal MS 6 E IX; Convenevole da Prato, Carmina regia; c. 1335 CE; Italy (Tuscany); f.28v @blmedieval.bsky.social

Jewish/Muslim segregation in Israel is unlike anything seen anywhere in the US within living memory. Israeli Jews are ~7x more likely to have zero Muslim neighbors than white Americans are to have zero Black neighbors — for Israeli Muslims vs Black Americans, it's ~78x.

In his early twenties, Camus got a summer job at the equivalent of the DMV, issuing auto permits and registrations. He was fired before the summer was out. According to Camus, he was told it was because “he did not know how to write.”

Our new DHS head

La eterna dicotomía entre madrugar para hacer ejercicio y cuidar la salud mental y perder la salud mental por madrugar para hacer ejercicio

When someone says „Scientists do not want you to know“ you can dismiss everything from there on. Scientists want you to know. They are desperate that you know. They can’t shut up about what they found out and want you to know.

Schools, water treatment plants, electrical infrastructure, hospitals, roads, airports, ports, you name it, we bombed it. Seeing the suffering caused by that, even 30 years later, up close does something to you. Or at least it should.

Here's a striking visual illusion - the 9 purple dots. Focus your eyes on the top left dot. That one is more purple than the others, right? Now try another dot... that one becomes the purple one! pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41744429/

I found the longer speech, the whole speech is so heartfelt inappropriate now as well. youtu.be/HfXmpJRZPYI?...

The most influential explanation of a recent surge in allergies is the hygiene hypothesis go.nature.com/40woBkB

The 1953 coup destroyed Iran's most promising conditions for organic democratization and poisoned the well for American-backed democracy for generations. The US created the very problem it now claims to want to solve. Ironic doesn't quite cover it. 22

This company should not exist.

I love an anecdote which makes a great philosopher’s personality vivid and clear. Happy 158th birthday, W.E.B.

When you ask for it à la modal

Saw a free screening of Mr Nobody against Putin & was struck by the plain courage of its protagonist/filmmaker, Pavel Talankin—who I literally bumped into and said hello to on the sidewalk beforehand! He’s not afraid of his country’s bully-in-chief; people around the world should follow his example.

Another solid three segments from @onthemedia.bsky.social on social media, the effects of ‘addiction’ language, doomscrolling, and the baleful spread of prediction markets. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...

I said "I love you" to another flightless bird yesterday. This one was a takahē on the predator-free island of Tiritiri Matangi near Auckland. After finding this bird on the far end of the island, I lay down in the tall grass and waited. After a while he approached closely and lingered.