Walking composition “What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.” —Fyodr Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov Last week I read Simon Winchester’s new book Land: How the Hunger for… Read more

Walking composition “There is too much tendency to making separate and independent bundles of both the physical and the moral facts of the universe. Whereas, all and everything is naturally related and interconnected.” —Ada Lovelace,… Read more

Shortly after January’s attempted coup in Washington, D.C., Leah Sottile, a long-time reporter on anti-government extremism (including this great piece on the history and co-opting of the “Don’t Tread on Me” Gadsden flag) and host… Read more

Once and future technology “If the ultimate authority in the world is human feeling, but somebody has discovered how to hack and manipulate human feelings, then the whole system collapses.” —Yuval Noah Harari speaking recently… Read more

Space and time “Movement is humankind’s oldest survival strategy.” — Paul Salopek, Out of Eden Walk My media consumption this week had a collision of observations about space. In National Geographic, Paul Salopek published an… Read more

The space between Ski Jesus says be nice to people. Listening to an episode of the Futures podcast on quantum mechanics with physicist Sean Caroll reminded me of a science fiction book I read recently—Micaiah… Read more

Grief “If we love anyone, we will grieve them when they die—and it will be harder, and last longer, than we ever expected.” —Mark Liebenow One of the newsletters I subscribe to (Zeynep Tufekci’s “Insight”)… Read more

A short time ago (a million years ago? Covid time is weird and stretchy and shapeless but combine it with attempted coup time and I don’t even know) I wrote a bit about the Boston… Read more

John Vaillant and the likeways of art “Public property rights stand equally important [to private ownership], for they secure the life sources for all citizens: the air, water, oceans, wildlife, fish, forests, vegetation, and soils.… Read more

The Boston Tea Party is one of the defining stories of America’s founding as a nation. I remember learning about it year after year in school in the 1980s, probably every American kid does. What… Read more