Friday, July 14, 2023
The other day Atlas asked me what is the highest number anyone has ever counted to, and of course, I had no idea. Kids ask great questions. So I looked it up, and within 5 seconds I'd learned that Jeremy Harper, a computer engineer from Birmingham, Alabama, broke the Guinness record for counting aloud to 1,000,000 in 2007. He counted nonstop sixteen hours per day - FOR 89 DAYS!!! - and during the count he neither left his home nor shaved. He live-streamed the entire three months!
Needless to say, Atlas was tickled to hear all this, and I was too. It immediately occurred to me "I wonder if some of it is on youtube," and of course, there is a clip of the last 50 numbers or so, and it is such a phenomenally weird and wonderful piece of footage.
— @sam_b_green
Thursday, July 13, 2023
It is said that the great American writer Hunter S. Thompson once typed out parts of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, because he wanted to konw what it felt like to write a great novel. (He did this at work while employed at the magazine Time in 1959. the magazine eventually fired him.)
— "Can anyone confirm or deny? Source: @etiennefortierdubois's Étienne from Atlas of Wonders and Monsters," @belletrist
Wednesday, July 12, 2023
He never succeeds in doing it. But he says in the book, "even though I can't prove using empirical and scientific tools, the existence of a God, I can show through anecdotal evidence, having seen thousands of patients come through this institution, that people who believe in God get better faster, and that the recovery is more enduring than people who don't." And for me, hearing that was more impactful, than if he had claimed that he had proved the existence of a God. Because I wouldn't have believed that.
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr, "Robert F. Kennedy Jr: CIA, Power, Corruption, War, Freedom, and Meaning | Lex Fridman Podcast #388"
Tuesday, July 11, 2023
When he first signed the contract to write the book, he expected to finish in five years. In the end, the book took 25 years to write — and Sherwin didn't do it alone.
— @nytbooks
Monday, July 10, 2023
Munch without people (for the most part). Who knew?
— @robertasmithnyt
Sunday, July 9, 2023
Because it’s a way for me to let myself know that just because this may be the most important thing that I ever commit to a data card on a camera, doesn’t mean it isn’t [expletive] content to everyone else. You know, there’s part of me that thinks I should be a writer or an entrepreneur or I could blah, blah, blah. But then I think about it and go, I’ve made my peace with what I am at my core: There’s really only one thing I’ve ever been any goddamn good at. So to keep imagining that I’m going to suddenly transform into this formidable multihyphenate? I’m just starting to not buy my own hype. It’s about: Can I feel good about what I’m doing? OK, yes, then I’ll feel good about it.
— Robert Downey Jr., "Robert Downey Jr.’s Post-Marvel Balancing Act," The New York Times
Saturday, July 8, 2023
Talking to the Believer 10 years after Dispersion's initial publication Price said "I started writing that essay not because of any interest in the internet, but out of frustration about how to be an artist, or whether I even should "be" one. Is it possible to make objects anymore? Is that interesting? So really it was my thinking through how to enter this other world, and when I finished it, I thought the text itself might be a piece."
— "Seth Price," Wikipedia
Friday, July 7, 2023
“If I would to try to control everything,” said Jacques Herzog, “I would have chosen the wrong job.”
— Christopher Hawthorne, " This Time, Herzog & de Meuron Are Inside the Museum," The New York Times
Thursday, July 6, 2023
Over time, Wisconsin voters have whittled away at the state’s unusual veto authority. In 1990, voters took away the “Vanna White veto,” which had allowed governors to strike individual letters in words to create new words. In 2008, voters rejected the “Frankenstein veto,” which had involved combining parts of two or more sentences to create a new sentence.
Because Mr. Evers’s veto eliminated only entire words and digits, without combining two or more sentences to create a new sentence, it appeared to be legal, said Rick Champagne, director of the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, a nonpartisan agency that provides research and legal advice to state lawmakers.
“Governor Evers’s veto does adhere to the constitutional requirements for a partial veto,” he said in an email.
— Sarah Mervosh, "With a Creative Edit, the Wisconsin Governor Raised School Funding. For 400 Years.," The New York Times
Wednesday, July 5, 2023
Steve Jobs's Turtleneck
— @minimuseumshop ad selling a 1x1 cm piece of a turtleneck Steve Jobs once wore
Tuesday, July 4, 2023
Come see my tableau.
— Emily
Monday, July 3, 2023
But - and this is where it gets really interesting - the statement continues that "A basic tenet of boundary surveying is that once a monument has been established, the location of the physical monument is the ultimate authority in delineating a boundary. Issues of legality trump scientific details, and the intended location of the point becomes secondary. In surveying, monuments rule!" In other words, the monument is in exactly the right spot because the monument itself marks the right spot (even if it really doesn't!).
— @sam_b_green
Sunday, July 2, 2023
The lawn chair used in the flight was reportedly given to an admiring boy named Jerry, though Walters regretted doing so when the Smithsonian Institution asked him to donate it to its museum. Twenty years later, Jerry sent an email to Mark Barry, a pilot who had documented Walters's story and dedicated a website to it, and identified himself. The chair was still sitting in his garage, attached to some of the original tethers and water jugs used as ballast. The chair was placed on loan to the San Diego Air and Space Museum, where it was exhibited in 2014. It was later donated to the Smithsonian and is on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia.
— "Lawnchair Larry flight," Wikipedia
Saturday, July 1, 2023
View from William Penn statue atop City Hall, 1937
— Caption under photo on wall in Philadelphia City Hall
Friday, June 30, 2023
It would be unfair to the historical record to separate the two.
— N*
Thursday, June 29, 2023
Dear Friends: Please do not paste any of printed matters in this great Document it makes it look like an add.
— Joseph Mikulec, writing in his big book
Wednesday, June 28, 2023
In 1977-9 when I was just 21-23 years old and was getting started in my what would turn out to be a lifetime career of making fine miniatures, I needed a product everyone could recognize and afford. I have always liked boxes of all sorts, so what better than an 18th c. English Tea Caddy? I made over 150 of these, and they sold throughout the world. They were a lot of work and carried a $45 price tag. To show clients this, I framed a set of parts to show just how something less than an inch long could have 29 pieces.
— @wmrrobertsonminiatures
Tuesday, June 27, 2023
My grandfather shot himself in that Buick.
— Percy Becker, No Hard Feelings
Monday, June 26, 2023
Too puffy.
— Bella (new barber) on my eybrows
Sunday, June 25, 2023
Parker liked the idea of something that happened in a split second but that could also be made to have a durational aspect to it.
— @stephenellcock on Cornelia Parker's Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, 1991
