QUOTE OF THE DAY: “The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster.”
—“Milan Kundera Warned Us About Historical Amnesia. Now It’s Happening Again,” Ewan Morrison, Quillette
“Conway remarked with a smile: ‘I suppose you’re certain, then, that no human affection can outlast a five-year absence?’
“‘It can, undoubtedly,’ replied the Chinese, ‘but only as a fragrance whose melancholy we may enjoy.”
-James Hilton, Lost Horizon
I DO KNOW IT SUCKS. BUT WHAT ELSE ARE YOU GONNA DO? IT STILL BEATS ALL AVAILABLE ALTERNATIVES: Life is Pain, Highness.
“‘It can, undoubtedly,’ replied the Chinese, ‘but only as a fragrance whose melancholy we may enjoy.”
-James Hilton, Lost Horizon
I DO KNOW IT SUCKS. BUT WHAT ELSE ARE YOU GONNA DO? IT STILL BEATS ALL AVAILABLE ALTERNATIVES: Life is Pain, Highness.
Male tourists in Poland may face arrest for wearing mankinis.
We start in 2019 and travel exponentially through time, witnessing the future of Earth, the death of the sun, the end of all stars, proton decay, zombie galaxies, possible future civilizations, exploding black holes, the effects of dark energy, alternate universes, the final fate of the cosmos — to name a few.
The beer-before-bread hypothesis is complemented by another: competitive feasting. According to this theory, would-be chieftains used alcohol to attract people to feasts that reinforced hierarchies, strengthened social bonds, and, not least, introduced new foods and technologies. Equal parts political rally, fraternity bash, and product launch, the best feasts required immense preparation. As agricultural societies grew more unequal, elites found another use for alcohol: as compensation for peasant labor. Alcohol fostered a craving for repeated use that induced peasants to keep producing surpluses, which fueled emergent civilizations and gave rulers the means to stay on top.
—Adapted from The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business, by David T. Courtwright, published by Harvard University Press
50 years ago last week, Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar was published for the first time. In a piece for The Atlantic, Ashley Fetters talked to a pair of kid lit experts about why the book remains so popular today.
Part of why both kids and parents love The Very Hungry Caterpillar is because it’s an educational book that doesn’t feel like a capital-E Educational book. Traditionally, children’s literature is a didactic genre: “It teaches something,” Martin says, “but the best children’s books teach without kids knowing that they’re learning something.” In The Very Hungry Caterpillar, she adds, “you learn the days of the week. You learn colors. You learn the fruits. You learn junk-food names. In the end, you learn a little bit about nutrition, too: If you eat a whole bunch of junk food, you’re not going to feel that great.” Yet, crucially, none of the valuable information being presented ever feels “in your face,” Martin says.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar was certainly one of my favorite books as a kid — along with Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Richard Scarry’s Busy, Busy Town& Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, and the Frog & Toad books — and it was one of the first books we read to our kids. I remember very clearly loving the partial pages and the holes. Holes! In a book! Right in the middle of the page! It felt transgressive. Like, what else is possible in this world if you can do such a thing? (Also, “caterpillar” is such a satisfying word to say, both correctly and, er, less so… I still default to my childhood “callarpitter” sometimes).
The Collective Effervescence of Dancing
In Search Of “Normal” (It’s Become A Festering Battleground)
“Normality” took a battering in the second half of the 20th century. Lots of people were angry about it and did their level best either to tear it down or render it definitively gauche. Who wanted to be normal? Normies were dull. Hammering the normies and transgression for the sake of transgression became a thing and is still a thing. Except, as Irish commentator Angela Nagle observes, it’s become an end in itself, at once “negative, nasty, and nihilistic”. Now it lives online in festering cesspools frequented by people who have no idea (and whose absence of ideas is not their fault) but who need rules and want normality. – Standpoin
Eleven Movies That Influenced The Look And Feel Of ‘Us’
You know, The Nutcracker is an obvious one. (And, of course, Dead Again – you probably knew that from the scissors.) – Los Angeles Times
How To Pick The Perfect Seat In The Movie Theatre
You’ll know the worst seat – i.e., the front row. “The existence of a worst, then, must suggest its opposite: The ideal seat. The perfect focal point that maximizes your visual and aural experience. Does it exist?” It’s science, y’all. – Popular Science