Saturday, October 17, 2020
When they told him about the disgraceful things Rasputin was comitting "on the side," he did not want to believe them. And why? For one simple reason: the colors used to paint Rasputin were simply too dark. Had those "well-wishers" not tried so hard, then, maybe, the emperor would have listened to their words. He who has given himself the goal of breaking apart two friends commits a big mistake if he depicts the one he is trying to destroy as a completely worthless individual. It is much easier to achieve the desired result if in condemning him or her, you also ad a bit of praise.
— Lily Dehn via Douglas Smith, Rasputin
Friday, October 16, 2020
He was shocked to find not everyone as awed by the significance of these holy places as he was.
— Douglas Smith, Rasputin
Thursday, October 15, 2020
The rat trap behind the untitled Ulrich Rückriem sculpture
— Brian Mucmullen tweet he posted to Instagram
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
The only thing that can keep me awake is frozen grapes.
— Lily
Tuesday, October 13, 2020
"So true!!!"
— @bradtroemel meme
Monday, October 12, 2020
So you do not need to collect everything. Actually, if you collect too many things, you cannot establish a hypothesis. To re-energize this format of books on cities, we need to put emphasis again on the hypothesis.
— Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, The Ordinary: Recordings
Sunday, October 11, 2020
I like seeing what they look like and naming them.
— Emily on having kids
Saturday, October 10, 2020
Not many quotes.
— Lily on her lack of quotes here recently
Friday, October 9, 2020
The reason for the popularity of such religious leaders from the lower depths should not be looked for in the degraded nature of the elite's religious sensibility, he argued, but in the shortcomings of the official church, namely the "stale and dry formalism" of the Russian higher clergy.
— Douglas Smith, Rasputin
Thursday, October 8, 2020
Chess.com
— Akshay
Wednesday, October 7, 2020
The view of research as data gathering only certainly isn't ours, though it's not unfamiliar.
— Denise Scott Brown, The Ordinary: Recordings
Tuesday, October 6, 2020
Lev Tikhomirov... noted this crucial fact in his diary in early 1916: "People say that the Emperor has been warned to his face that Rasputin is destroying the Dynasty. He replies: "Oh, that's silly nonsense; his importance is greatly exagerated." An utterly incomprehensible point of view. For this is in fact where the destruction comes from, the wild exaggerations. What really matters is not what sort of influence Grishka has on the Emperor, but what sort of influence the people think he has. This is precisely what is undermining the authority of the Tasar and the Dynasty." To separate Rasputin from his mythodology, I came to realize, was to completely misunderstand him. There is no Rasputin without the stories about Rasputin.
— Douglas Smith, Rasputin
Monday, October 5, 2020
Yes. There is also an incredibly beautiful text by Menander, which really became the trigger for "The Generic City." The text explained how you could describe any city in a positive way. If the city is on top of a mountain, you could say it is totally inaccessible, or you would say it is well defended, or you coudl say that it has beautiful views and panoramic conditions.
— Rem Koolhaas, The Ordinary: Recordings
Sunday, October 4, 2020
Other things contributed to making me paint what I do the way I do. For one thing, I have always wanted everybody to like my work.
— Norman Rockwell, My Adventures as an Illustrator
Saturday, October 3, 2020
Knowing what it weighs comes after knowing how many people you need to carry it.
— David
Friday, October 2, 2020
"He said that one of the sad things in life, particularly if you were a politican, was that you discovered that the other side really had a very good case. He was most unpartisan in that way." According to Ormsby-Gore, Kennedy even wondered whether he was really cut out to be a politician because he was so often impressed by the other side's arguments when he really examined them in detail.
— Fredrik Logevall, JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century
Thursday, October 1, 2020
Frank Kermode suggests of fiction that the ending of a story is necessary to make sense of everything that came before it. Grit happens after that ending.
— David, "Grit Plus Tape"
Wednesday, September 30, 2020
"He remembered people's names."
— Fredrik Logevall, JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century
Tuesday, September 29, 2020
There aren't enough ponds in New England for everyone to have one.
— David
Monday, September 28, 2020
Sims
Walking
Bird
Games
— Lily drafting her response to a survey asking for her "Hobbies/Outside Interests"
