I just want to say: in keeping with the “limiting virtues” spirit of my latest newsletter, I am ever more resolved not to utilize any of the promotion tools in Substack. It drives me bananas to see them copying the quote-tweet and algo-pushed design features of Twitter, and I am officially old enough to be that one lady shaking her fist at the sky, so—
James Bridle consults LLMs for advice about building chairs, has mixed results: booktwo.org/notebook/…
Anyone here know students at St. Michael’s College at the U of Toronto? I’m intrigued on my kids' behalf.
On the city and the “limiting virtues”: cafe, church, library: open.substack.com/pub/sarah…
My youngest is 14 today. 💔 Should I just openly tell my grad students that being a wife and mother is orders of magnitude more meaningful than any work I’ve done (and I need work like oxygen)?
Yikes! Jordan Castro’s unsparing look at the ubiquity of “right?” as a form of commanding consensus in professor-speak: sarahendren.com/2024/03/2…
Good to see this reasoned testimony by Carter Snead to the senate, offering principles and correcting the record on misconstrued cases after Dobbs. https://ethicscenter.nd.edu/assets/562574/snead_senate_judiciary_20240320.pdf
Our 15 yr old daughter reports that her friends laugh, in a friendly way, at the idea that we have “family dinner.” Apparently few people among her cohort do this??
Iain McGilchrist citing Heschel on the tyranny and inadequacy of “thinghood” for capturing the world’s complexity: sarahendren.com/2024/03/2…
Helping STEM academics get clearer about ethical tech, by way of @ayjay’s generous concision with the Standard Critique of Technology: sarahendren.com/2024/03/1…
Still on McGilchrist over here — a good intro to his argument is in this lecture: www.youtube.com/watch
Got a fabricator making me a bunch of samples for semi-sculptural “canvases.” Finishing up a short film and then heading to the studio for the loooong summer.
And reading McGilchrist, I suddenly see why Sufjan Stevens’s “Chicago” speaks to so many people: all things go / all things grow / all things know.
About 50 pages into McGilchrist, The Matter With Things. It’s good to be alive and in the awestruck presence of a contemporary magnum opus.
Holy wow the Know Your Enemy episode on Rene Girard with John Ganz. So good. Based on this series: open.substack.com/pub/johng…
JRRT doesn’t need me to hype him, but man what a relief to give up on Dune (sorry, still excruciating at 150 pp+) and go back to The Hobbit at my 13 yr old’s request. The beauty and freshness of the sentences is a salve for the brain.
No train ride is too long in company of John Tavener’s sublime “Funeral Canticle.”
I’m pleased to have an essay in the catalogue accompanying SFMOMA’s exhibition opening later this year on the design of sports: Get In the Game, starting October: www.sfmoma.org/press-rel…
My five year old niece: “Jesus is the son of God, and he glows in the dark.” You said it, kid.
So much of parenting teenagers is choosing what *not to say. Sometimes all my brain cells are going toward an inner monologue: keep your mouth shut, keep it shut, nope, shut shut