Simple Machine will be in the Indy Shorts festival next month — Deadline write up here!

Often the Dying Ask for a Map": Upon opening the new issue of Comment, that B.H. Fairchild poem stopped me in my tracks.

Passed much of a long solo road trip this weekend listening to Middlemarch. I forgot how funny it is! So many hilarious snarky asides.

I’m glad to see this decently fair coverage of the Abigail Adams Institute, which I have found to offer high-quality free humanities education and community, for students and beyond. The Great Conversation, in its online offering, was a great salve to me in deep pandemic days.

Howard Jones sings God Only Knows in memory of Brian Wilson.

Today I talked with a priest, longtime educator, former university president, now back in the regular classroom teaching ethics. He confirmed what I have been suspecting in midlife: that the invisible thread of teaching, the I and Thou encounter, is the most likely to survive us when we’re done.

Finished reading: North Woods by Daniel Mason 📚 A book about architecture that’s not about architecture: one house and its many lives over centuries. Adventurous. Much to admire.

Thrilled to see this piece in Wallpaper, including one of my projects, about the just-opened show at the V&A on disability and design.

Glad to see this e-flux review of Looking After Each Other, now on view in Seoul.

Just talked with a friend about the Am Dash, and he speculated about whether the future of life-with-bots might have this quality of cat-mouse tactics. Introduce human-only elements; the bots lag behind, can only chase and imitate downstream; rinse and repeat?

RIP Alisdair MacIntyre.

Sometimes I still mistake people for Paul Farmer on the street in Cambridge. 💔

I wrote about prototyping, design for fourth graders, and Hannah Arendt’s natality.

Finished reading: What Happened to Sophie Wilder by Christopher Beha 📚

Opening in ten days: the Victoria & Albert’s new Storehouse, a behind-the-scenes look at collections, curatorial and conservation processes, and more. Especially cool: you can Order an Object!

My boy in the first seat, right side, River Charles. We read The Boys in the Boat together, and then watched the movie. Let’s just say that was an instructive case of “adaptation.”

The first of my two lectures on the virtues of dependence is up at For Your Consideration. This invitation got me to finally make some early sense of changing my mind in big ways starting ~4 years ago. Expansionist design, Alisdair MacIntyre, selective abortion, animality, faith, hope, Love.

Good news for Simple Machine: We were chosen as a Best Documentary in this festival, won the Audience Award for Documentary Short in this one, and I got nominated for Best First-Time Director in another.

The Ignatius Study Bible has a synopsis of salvation history that is as beautiful as it is concise. A few short pages lay out the epic themes of the whole text. If there’s someone you know who wants the big basic story — what is Christianity about? — I can scan and send it to you.

Thanks to @dorsalstream@mastodon.cloud for referring me to Madame Vo in NYC. I bought the cookbook; now trying my hand at habitual home cooking my favorite food.