I wanted the world to stop, and I wouldn’t stop until it did.
File this one under “sentences of note”. The entire essay is almost too good of a cautionary tale to be true, but who cares if it’s “true” as long as it’s good.
There’s no space in Bangkok left untouched, no discarded patch of land underneath a tangle of elevated roadways, no plot too harsh and uninviting, that doesn’t have at least four or five vendors pitching something, be it food, motor parts, lottery tickets, keys made on order, outdoor tailors, and haircuts. No placid backdrop your eyes can rest on to give your senses and brain a break.
File this one under “paragraphs of note”. Chris Arnade at his best.
I have to say there was a moment as the K-poptometrist and I stared deeply into each others’ eyes (him to assess my astigmatism, me because my head was in a cage) where I momentarily forgot that I am quite happily partnered with my girlfriend and in my head was like, wait, Dr Lee… what are we? Then he told me that I should be on the lookout for impending presbyopia due to my age, which brought me back to earth.
File under “footnotes of note”, from Rachel Kwon.
I tried watching a Tinderbox journaling tutorial on Youtube, and it was just way too much overhead for me. But the beauty of Tinderbox is that you can have as much or as little structure as fits my needs, and my needs are modest… for now.
🎭 Went to the theater for the first time in years to watch Babbitt, a well-executed dumbing down of Sinclair Lewis’s novel about middle-aged and middle-class conformity. The play took the lazy approach of taking pot shots at MAGA; a more biting satire would have aimed at the upper middle class conformists in the audience.
Matthew Gasda for the Wisdom of Crowds:
If, in 1450, someone had gone around Florence saying, “No, no, no, we don’t live in a renaissance, culture is in decay,” I think it would have been possible to throw open the doors of the workshops, cathedrals, churches, and wealthy residences, and say, “Well, you know, I think you might be wrong about that. Take a look at this.” But in 2024, what do optimists see when you throw open the doors? Mr. Beast? Addison Rae? BAP? Talk Tuah?
I don’t know what three of those four are, but I’d show Teenage Engineering, Panic Software and this.
Not sure where I first saw the suggestion that one should never use typographic enhancements like bold or italic text to emphasize the written word, but the latest Daring Fireball post and the style guide that led to it are a good reminded for why it is indeed a good idea not to use them.
Busy day today, but there is always time for a few good links:
Adam Mastroianni nails it:
When people revile a degree from Harvard’s Extension School and revere a degree from Harvard College, they’re saying that the value of an education doesn’t come from the fact that you got educated. It comes from the fact that you got picked.
Alas, it is a paid post, and the more I encounter those the less I think of Substack and — this is not rational, I know — people who use it to blog. Because that is all Substack is: a blog with an optional, easy to implement paywall. I am not a fan.
Sebregondi and Franceschi picked an astutely international selection of names to drop: an Englishman, an American, and a Frenchman encouraged cosmopolitan aspirations. “Made in China,” on the other hand, did not, so they left that bit out.
I don’t remember how I came about this history of the Moleskine notebook but oh what a history. “Chatwin, Hemingway, Matisse”, yeah right.
And I would have absolutely no complaints if it weren’t so ridiculously expensive for what you get. I want the Costco of premium mediocre notebooks, not the Nordstrom.