Sunday, October 29, 2023
They often write as if all important ideas in a given age can be traced back to one or other extraordinary individual - whether Plato, Confucius, Adam Smith, or Karl Marks - rather than seeing such authors' writings as particularly brilliant interventions in debates that were already going on in taverns or dinner parties or public gardens (or, for that matter, lecture rooms), but which otherwise might never have been written down. It's a bit like pretending William Shakespeare had somehow invented the English language. In fact, many of Shakespeare's most brilliant turns of phrase turn out to have been common expressions of the day, which any Elizabethan Englishman or woman would be likely to have thrown into casual conversation, and whose authors remain as obscure as those of knock-knock jokes – even if, were it not for Shakespeare, they'd probably have passed out of use and been forgotten long ago.
— David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything
Saturday, October 28, 2023
This is a performance art... You need to know something about the ambitions of the people you're talking to.
— David Cornwell, The Pigeon Tunnel
Friday, October 27, 2023
Concerned that he lacked a native facility for remembering names and appointments, and believing that “a politician who sees a man once should remember him forever," Weed consciously trained his memory. He spent fifteen minutes every night telling his wife, Catherine, everything that had happened to him that day, everyone he had met, the exact words spoken.
— Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
Thursday, October 26, 2023
SPEED DEMON
I CAST THEE OUT
DRIVE THE LIMIT
— Message on highway sign
Wednesday, October 25, 2023
In a recent interview on @fallontonight, Jacob Elordi, who is playing Elvis Presley in @SofiaCoppola's #PriscillaMovie, admitted that the most he knew about the King of Rock and Roll was from 'Lilo & Stitch.'
— @bustle
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
Vintage
Polaroid
Pictures
You
Will
Never
Regret
— Sign in Central Park
Monday, October 23, 2023
To the end of his life, he was haunted by the finality of death and the evanescence of earthly accomplishments.
— Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
Sunday, October 22, 2023
They call it Q-Day: the day when a quantium computer, one more powerful than any yet built, could shatter the world of privacy and security as we know it.
— Zach Montague, "The Race to Save Our Secrets From the Computers of the Future," via @bmwiseman
Saturday, October 21, 2023
The gross occurrence of human activity is relatively easy to document. The date and time of an event is easy to pinpoint. Personal recollections about the step-by-step progress, on the other hand, are fickle. As Arthur himself says, "Being largely based upon memories that provide something less than total recall, and covering a period of my life more than two-thirds a century, a full accounting of my life would be an impossible undertaking..."
— John Szimanski, Younger Women, Faster Airplanes, Bigger Crocodiles: The Story of Arthur Jones - the Man Who Invented the Nautilus Exercise Machines, Revolutionized the Health Club Industry, and Forever Changed the Way Every Human Being Exercises
Friday, October 20, 2023
The past was always personal for Tony: during a gallery talk for the In 08:44 Out 20:16 exhibition @princetonarchitecture @drawing.matter in 2017, John Ruskin's stone collection was both a chance to reflect on the legacy of Ruskin's "Stones of Venice," and an opportunity to share the story of his own Venice journey at the age of 15--the moment he decided to pursue architecture.
— @phillipdenny
Thursday, October 19, 2023
Without the march of events that led to the Civil War, Lincoln still would have been a good man, but most likely would never have been publically recognized as a great man.
— Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
Wednesday, October 18, 2023
You know, sharks existed before trees.
— Joe Rogan, "#2047 - Brian Muraresku, The Joe Rogan Experience"
Tuesday, October 17, 2023
Foster claims that Art Nouveau designers of the past "resisted the effects of industry" but "there is no such resistance in contemporary design: it delights in postindustrial technologies and is happy to sacrifice the semi-autonomy of architecture and art to the manipulations of design."
— Mr. Keedy, "Style is not a Four Letter Word"
Monday, October 16, 2023
The pleasure of recognizing that one may have to undergo the same realizations, write the same notes in the margins, return to the same themes in one's work, relearn the same emotional truths, write the same book over and over again—not because one is stupid or obstinate or incapable of change, but because such revisitations constitute a life.
— Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts
Sunday, October 15, 2023
Ovals have yet to have their moment.
— David
Saturday, October 14, 2023
I saw it and I was flipping through and thought, "Yeah this is the kind of thing that I am."
— David on Lester Walker's American Shelter
Friday, October 13, 2023
Poetry machine would be very keen and not too dificult on my spleen.
— Sid
Thursday, October 12, 2023
I won't live long enough to make another bear like that one.
— George Mendonça, Fast, Cheap & Out of Control
Wednesday, October 11, 2023
Wow, I thought. First "It's Pablo-matic," then "The Book of Hov," and now I'm going to complain about how "Creative Sources" is a haphazard collection that doesn't accomplish much but to aggrandize an already widely celebrated person? Do I just hate fun? What kind of person objects to so many things that bring people joy?
Do I simply have less of an intrinsic appreciation for the thrill of celebrity? No, I love celebrities! I just like when they do things. And as I stared down a mannequin wearing Lee's fuschia double-breasted Virgil Abloh-designed Louis Vuitton suit and Air Jordans, I wondered where Lee's own vision was, and why the exhibit around me was so unable to achieve more than displaying a hodgepodge of stuff he happens to have.
— Adlan Jackson, "Spike Lee’s Stuff Is Cool. But What Does It All Mean?," Hell Gate
Tuesday, October 10, 2023
The Address does what all great art acomplishes. Like Keats's Grecian urn, it "tease[s] us out of thought / As doth eternity."
— Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America
