Imbue

By pretzeling ourselves with such gusto over his work, we are, in fact, simply converting what could be seen as a novelty item or a fashion experiment into a phenomenon. We are making it famous. And in doing so, we imbue it with social meaning and symbolism that gives it a life beyond clothing, making it into an artifact of its time. Maybe it was that already. (Fashion historians of the future can weigh in.) But now it definitely is.

— Vanessa Friedman “The $1,290 Balenciaga Shirt That Messed With the Internet” The New York Times

intention

Google never set out to threaten biodiversity in its front yard, of course. Like so many stories these days about Big Tech, this is a tale about how attempts to do good often produce unexpected consequences, and how even smart people (especially, perhaps, smart people) can be reluctant to rethink their convictions.

— David Streitfeld “As Google Feeds Cats, Owl Lovers Cry Foul” The New York Times

paradox

And yet, except for close family members, Ralph has never really needed other people. It’s a paradox that often points to success, and also to leadership — the man with superb social skills who enjoys and appreciates his fellow human beings but is essentially self-sufficient. This may be why it is easier to love Ralph Roberts than to know him well.

— William Novak Incredible Dream: Ralph Roberts and the Story of Comcast

mental choking

Within the older group, the inability to identify and say the right words was strongly linked to fitness. The more fit someone was, the less likely he or she was to go through a “what’s that word again?” moment of mental choking.

— Gretchen Reynolds “How Exercise Can Help You Recall Words” The New York Times Magazine

story

“Because we didn’t have TV and movies there was a lot of storytelling.” — Paul Schrader on “The New Yorker Radio Hour“

https://www.wnyc.org/widgets/ondemand_player/thenewyorker/?share=1#file=/audio/json/858236/

Until pretty recently, MCU films have suffered from collective curve-grading—each film seemed content to settle for “better than expected,” as opposed to being really, truly good—and that feeling returns here, unfortunately.

—  Matt Zoller Seitz “AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR” RogerEbert.com

toll

It understands, in rare and terrifying way, the mental toll of feeling like either an exile or a dangerous apostate within one’s faith community, alienated both from a caring God and from the platitudes that seem to satisfy others in the pews — of becoming convinced that if you’re not frightened then you’re purposely shutting yourself off from reality. It knows the special existential terror of trying to pray without being sure that God is listening, in a world where the nonexistence of God seems just as plausible as the alternative.

— Alissa Wilkinson “First Reformed, starring Ethan Hawke, is bruising, vital, and one of the year’s best films” Vox

truths

He loved fiction and (unlike so many half or three-quarter writers) was never ashamed of it. He loved it in its irresponsibility, in its comedy, in its vulgarity, and its divine independence. He never confused it with other things made of words, like statements of social justice or personal rectitude, journalism or political speeches, all of which are vital and necessary for lives we live outside of fiction, but none of which are fiction, which is a medium that must always allow itself, as those other forms often can’t, the possibility of expressing intimate and inconvenient truths.

— Zadie Smith “Philip Roth, a Writer All the Way Down” The New Yorker

exposure

Have you ever stopped to think that it’s insane how much time, attention, and content we share on the Internet while we get essentially nothing back except maybe that vague notion of “exposure”? Oh yes, the things we do for exposure…

The sad thing about exposure is that it doesn’t feed you, not unless you have a lot of it, and even then only maybe.

— Eunika Sot “How Internet Behemoths Are Keeping Millennials Poor” Hacker Noon

renovate

About that time, Tony Inglis’s engineering and transport company got the job to remove phone boxes from the streets and auction them off. But he ended up buying hundreds of them himself, with the idea of renovating and selling them.

That might have seemed like a crazy idea back then. “They are so much against the times,” Mr. Inglis said in a recent interview. “They are everything that you wouldn’t do today. They’re big, heavy.”

But Mr. Inglis said he had heard the calls to preserve the kiosks and had seen how some of them were listed as historic buildings. He said he had been convinced that he could make a business of restoring them, and he was soon proved right.

— Palko Karasz “The Red Phone Box, a British Icon, Stages a Comeback” The New York Times

Gold

The eating of gold (chrysophagy? aurivorism?) dates back to long before the stunt-food era—it has been consumed by medieval alchemists, pharaonic Egyptians, and Victorian aesthetes.

— Helen Rosner “Twenty-Four Karat Chicken Wings and the Allure of Eating Gold” The New Yorker