The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“Surrounded by people it is very easy to feel alone. Surrounded by penguins, less so.”

— Nell Stevens / Bleaker House: Chasing My Novel to the End of the World

“I felt this pain early. My brain chemistry was especially susceptible to this change, particularly vulnerable to the architecture of our phones, our apps, and our feeds. I spent thousands of hours caught within the smartphone-enabled dopamine trap attached to my body. I could feel my daily ability to focus narrowed, excised, dissolved, and diminished as this extraction of my attention became more efficient.”

— Tobias Rose-Stockwell / “Reconstructing Our Attention in the Era of Infinite Digital Rabbit Holes”

“The #ClimateCrisis is not a warning. It’s happening. I urge world leaders to ACT now.”

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus / Director-General of the World Health Organization

“This is just the beginning … Current policies globally have us hitting 2.7 degrees (Celsius) warming by 2100. That’s truly terrifying … As scientists agreed last year: There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all. Deep, rapid and sustained cuts in carbon emissions to net zero can halt the warming, but humanity will have to adapt to even more severe heatwaves in the future.”

— Simon Lewis / Chair of global change science at the University College London

“It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don’t believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God—who knows all that can be known—seems powerless to change.”

— Cormac McCarthy / All the Pretty Horses

“Here follows the phone number of a dead person.
Here follows a game based on perfect information.
Five minutes have passed since I wrote this line.
I mistook my baby’s cry for the radiator hiss.”

— Dan Chiasson / “Here Follows an Account of the Nature of Birds”

“I live on a yellow submarine
not quite as glamorous as it sounds”

— Maija Haavisto / “Ship / Plum”

What I’m Listening To:

“Little people like your offspring
Boiled alive for some Gods stocking
Buddha’s watching, Buddha’s waiting”

— The Human League / “Being Boiled (Fast Version)”