Friday links! As I remember edition

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The Bowery this morning, making way

The Bowery this morning, making way

New York, New York: the city so nice, it exists only in your memory. Combat! blog has returned to its point of origin and the loving embrace of Stubble’s futon, and everything is as it once was, except for our surroundings. Those have remained the same by changing utterly. On the plus side, there’s a delicious barbecue place on 6th Street. On the minus side, they’re tearing down Norman’s, which I never really went to but pleased me nonetheless when I shuffled by. Today is Friday, and maybe you should have enjoyed it more while it was. Won’t you collect and recollect with me?

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Friday links! Spectrum of despair edition

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Frida Kahlo's "Without Hope"

Frida Kahlo’s “Without Hope”

In Spanish, the word for “desperate” is “desesperado”—literally de-hoped. It’s an interesting piece of etymology, since the English “desperate” often connotes frenzied activity: a desperate search, a desperate plea, the wandering trouble that is the desperado. Our actions—our desperate attempts, if you will—tend to reach their peak when hope is gone. That is the moment when action itself feels like it should be enough, when what we’re trying to accomplish fades into the experience of doing something. Today is Friday, and despair is a spectrum with pure action at one end and pure efficacy at the other. Won’t you slide along with me?

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Friday links! Pushing the medium edition

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The cast of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark relishes the thrill of simply being alive.

The cast of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark relishes the simple thrill of being alive.

Certain media are suited to certain stories. When he was torturing future generations with the Poetics, for example, Aristotle realized that plays work best for narratives that are unified in place, time and action. Movies based on plays invariably feel cramped and stultified, using our most agile temporal medium to tell the story of four people walking in and out of a room to argue. Movies are about bus explosions and journeys to Mordor. Movies about interiority, on the other hand, rarely work, whereas novels of consciousness comprise our must vibrant era of literary production. So what kind of story is the internet good at telling? Today is Friday, and we’re still figuring out the form. Won’t you prod at the constraints with me?

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Friday links! Recognize I’m a fool and you love me edition

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IdioticFools

Nietzsche wrote that it is meaningless to say this life is good or bad, because we have nothing to compare it to. I feel the same way about people. It seems like the general run of them is infuriatingly stupid and awful, plus proud, and this feeling only intensifies when you get the internet. But to whom are we comparing them? The dead people we know from history are instances of selection bias, and our selves are not exactly paragons. It’s possible that all men are fools, as Boileau says, and with every effort they differ only in degree. You have to love them, though, because your alternative is to be miserable. Today is Friday, and other people pit our honesty against our happiness. Won’t you try to broker a settlement with me?

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Friday links! Baller-garchy edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment
by Thomas Nast—the cartoonist, not my rap name

by Thomas Nast—the cartoonist, not my rap name

Let’s say a witch transports you to a mythical country called, I dunno, Furmerica or Harmonica or whatever. The country is nominally a democracy, but everyone you meet agrees that Furmerican politics are a farce. The two major parties are operatively indistinguishable, both in their dishonesty and in their infatuation with rich patrons. The few politicians who sincerely hope to govern by their beliefs—the real Furmericans, if you will—are invariably dumb. The Congress of Furmerica is a long argument between liars and fools, and don’t even get me started on the Hexagonal Office. Ask any citizen, and he’ll tell you that they’re all a bunch of bums, which is why he doesn’t even pay attention anymore. Today is Friday, and we have pinpointed Furmerica’s second biggest problem. Won’t you skirt the root cause with me?

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