Wednesday, November 27, 2024
Nowhere in that history is Mr. Alam. (Karina Sokolovsky, a spokeswoman for Sotheby’s, confirmed that the banana was purchased from the cart where Mr. Alam works the day of the sale. The vendor himself has no specific recollection of selling an extra-special fruit.)
— Sarah Maslin Nir, "The Sidewalk Fruit Vendor Who Sold a $6.2 Million Banana for 25 Cents," The New York Times
Tuesday, November 26, 2024
I said to myself, "Catering is very ephemeral." You work so hard, you get a beautiful celebration, and then it's gone. But if you write a book that's well-liked, that is forever.
— Martha Stewart, Martha
Monday, November 25, 2024
On walking: again and again (and again), the significance of the world is derived from tiny details never otherwise noted; this is the stuff from which the world may replenish itself. At the end of a day of walking, the wealth of a single day is past counting.
— Werner Herzog, Every Man for Himself and God Against All
Sunday, November 24, 2024
iPhone Tombstone in Ufa, Russia (2018)
— @welcome.jpeg
Saturday, November 23, 2024
The ballots do not carry identifying information, but some voters this year — Mr. Tripple included — doodled or otherwise marked their ballots so they could later find them when published. One person reported writing in the serial number of a $2 bill.
— Mike Baker, "An Idaho County Will Publish Everyone’s Ballots to Combat Mistrust," The New York Times
Friday, November 22, 2024
Back in Munich, my mother was endlessly posting applications to film grant committees and sending out copies of my early films for viewing.
— Werner Herzog, Every Man for Himself and God Against All
Thursday, November 21, 2024
Carbon dating has shown us that a painting begun by one painter was completed more than five thousand years later by another, which is as though a painting begun before the time of the first pharaohs had been recently completed.
— Werner Herzog, Every Man for Himself and God Against All
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
The regular schedule of the fairs is also part of their appeal for publishers. The fairs become self-imposed deadlines for projects, as they're the perfect opportunity (or excuse) to launch new work, plan related events, and generally celebrate a growing catalog of publications.
— Christopher Sleboda and Kathleen Sieboda, "The State of Fairs from Bostor to San Francisco," Idea
Tuesday, November 19, 2024
awful / true
— @kellianderson on John McPhee, "Writing teaches writing." via @parisreview
Monday, November 18, 2024
He kept marking important passages. His father Rudolf, my archeologist grandfather, had done the same thing. Most of the books in Rudolf's library were copiously underlined and annotated, but in the mania of his last years, he started underlining everything in a book from beginning to end. Every line, every word, every letter.
— Werner Herzog, Every Man for Himself and God Against All
Sunday, November 17, 2024
Every element of text in the book-essays, captions, end notes, ISBN, and cover-is set in 11 pt Diatype Semi-Mono. This deliberate typesize choice was made to remove conventional typographic hierarchies.
— @christophersleboda
Saturday, November 16, 2024
Sometimes I show his adorable face, sometimes I hide it. I'm figuring out in real time what feels best. It's for all the reasons you'd imagine it is, but also - there's something so magical about childhood. It just feels like it should be a bubble of peace and privacy and coziness as much as it can be. "Well then why even share the picture if you're going to cover his face?" I guess because l've always thought of this as a digital scrapbook, and it doesn't feel right if he's not in it - a lot! Pictures like this, altered though they are, still make me smile and remind me of this moment in time. A time when he spent almost his whole first year of life in the feedstore as we embarked on this wild adventure. This is just where l've landed for now. A little bit of both, and reserving the right to feel differently at any time.
— @bigskycaroline
Friday, November 15, 2024
Not knowing things that many others do often has serious economic consequences.
— J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy
Thursday, November 14, 2024
When you have completed what you thought you had to do
— The Raconteurs, "Steady, As She Goes"
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
I think actually humanity has been protected by the fact that the overlap between really smart, well-educated people and people who want to do really horrific things has generally been small. Let’s say I’m someone who I have a PhD in this field, I have a well-paying job. There’s so much to lose. Even assuming I’m completely evil, which most people are not, why would such a person risk their life, risk their legacy, their reputation to do something truly, truly evil? If we had a lot more people like that, the world would be a much more dangerous place. And so my worry is that by being a much more intelligent agent, AI could break that correlation.
— Dario Amodei, "Dario Amodei: Anthropic CEO on Claude, AGI & the Future of AI & Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast #452"
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
A few weeks ago, dozens of photographs of the "We Are Our Mountains" ("Tatik-Papik*) monument in occupied Artsakh disappeared from Wikimedia Commons. A red text box emerged, warning against uploading new images in which the monument features prominently, as it is located in "a country that does not provide Wikimedia Commons-acceptable freedom of panorama." The monument, composed of volcanic tuff stone and weighing thousands of pounds, had not moved, of course. But its surrounding, invisible borders, and thus applicable copyright laws, had changed.
— @hyperallergic, "When Copyright Transforms the Right to Remember"
Monday, November 11, 2024
Perhaps one day he will read this book and understand. As Gloria wrote in her journal in 1971, reflecting on the deaths of the people she knew and loved, "So many and then there's no one left but one's self. Then one knows it's only the long walk of the blood, one's children, that endure."
— Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe, Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
Sunday, November 10, 2024
For 27 years, photographer Deanna Dikeman photographed her parents waving goodbye in their driveway.
— @welcome.jpeg
Saturday, November 9, 2024
"I'm a writer" Truman Capote said, "and I use everything."
— Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe, Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
Friday, November 8, 2024
Isamu Noguchi, Lobby Ceiling for Magic Chef Building (now a U-Haul store), 1946-1948.
— @craighlee
