Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

It’s one void after another is what it is, he said. It aint just the one. Like it says in the good book. You think the void is just the void but it aint. It goes on.

— Cormac McCarthy / The Passenger

A crooked growth means it can be a loophole. And a loophole can be a means to freedom. I like being free.

— Margaret Rhee / “Crooked”

“A country that doesn’t believe in facts is not a safe place to build a career in science,” wrote one respondent.

— Jeff Tollefson / “The US election is monumental for science, say Naturereaders — here’s why” / Nature

These days I wake in the used light of someone’s spent life.
   I am often a stranger to myself;
  I have no place of origin, no home.

— Cheswayo Mphanza / “Frame Six”

More than 40 climate scientists are urging Nordic ministers to prevent global warming from causing a major change in an Atlantic Ocean current, which could trigger abrupt shifts in weather patterns and damage ecosystems . . . Global subsidies for fossil fuels reached a record $7 trillion in 2022, according to the International Monetary Fund . . . Such subsidies show there is no credible effort to prevent such a climate disaster, said professor Stefan Rahmstorf from Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

— “Climate scientists warn Nordic ministers of changing Atlantic Ocean current” / Reuters

Hers is the kind of presence that registers as an absence. Motherly.

— Tess Gunty / The Rabbit Hutch

Maybe you’d better go eat. You need to keep your strength up if you aim to wrest the secrets of creation from the gods. They’re a testy lot by all accounts.

— Cormac McCarthy / The Passenger

What I’m Listening To:

Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider
Girls go to Mars, become rock stars

— Sonic Youth / “Nevermind (What Was It Anyway)”