Sunday, May 10, 2020

Appiah’s list started to read like a premonition

“Appiah’s list started to read like a premonition” — an article from 2010 reads like “a rundown of the most prominent and brutal vectors of Covid-19 in the US” 


“A few months ago, you were talking smack about my year in a cabin. Now you’re trapped in your condo.” — Henry David Thoreau has a few words for you


Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, by Vincent C. Müller (Leeds)

Anthony Gottlieb reviews Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers, by Cheryl Misak, at The New Yorker, and Alex Dean reviews the same at Prospect Magazine








Love Beyond Label: Lisel Mueller’s Tender Poem About the Lush, Unclassifiable Bond Between Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann


A lovely antidote to “the rude, irrelevant question of our age,” the hollow assumption that “the event of two bodies meshing together establishes the degree of love.”


Among the handful of things I have learned about life with the calm, quiet clarity of elemental knowing is one that bears repeating: The human heart is an ancient beast that roars and purrs with the same passions, whatever labels we may give them. 


Washington Post: “Bookshelves are having a moment. Not long ago, their epitaph was being written. Ikea’s redesign of its Billy unit to accommodate objects other than books was cited as evidence that we had turned the page on possessing print. Now, that story has a sequel. Self-isolation has people rediscovering the value of having hardcovers at home. In addition, television networks’ shift to interviews via Skype, rather than in a studio, is revealing the bookcase backdrops of pundits, news anchors and celebrities at home. That domestic exposure sparked a social media conversation about literary decor…”  [Note – so glad that bookshelves are – back – mine never went away and there many many of them in my house.]