Every beloved novel ever written was once somebody's half-articulated dream.

Dear novelists: thank you. Keep writing.

That is all.

💙

Hello, I am still alive, hope you are too 💙

Anna Olga Albertina Brown (1858-1945), a Prussian woman of Black and Jewish heritage, who became a famed aerialist at the Cirque Fernando in Paris known as "Miss Lala," among other stage names.

Sending you all the brute force you require! Also, I think I was paraphrasing Deborah Levy who said that or something similar at a talk in Paris a few years ago :)

Yes, apparently this is the answer. The can't smell it during the spacewalk, but they smell it on things after, when the bring molecules with them back inside.

So cool!

!!!

Today I learned that astronauts have described space as smelling like "burnt steak and gunpowder."

My favorite Star Wars movie by far...

Our most recent common ancestor is a lot more recent than we might think: "your genealogical connections to the entire globe mean that not too long ago your ancestors were involved in every event in world history" www.scientificamerican.com/article/huma...

Interesting to remember that humans in fact show very little genetic diversity. You (and I) are more closely related to every single other human being on the planet than two chimpanzees living just a few valleys away from each other in the same region of Africa. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnYS...

We NEED this ethos to permeate our society.

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something." — T.H. White, The Once and Future King

OpenAI basically says they want college classrooms to be the test site. We’d be paying to be their subjects. No thanks. Pay faculty, hire more faculty.

Thanks so much! Can't wait.

Fiction.

I do accept that language evolves with time, but one thing I do think we should resist is the use of the word "novel" for any form of nonfiction book.

"It is odd to watch with what feverish ardor the Americans pursue prosperity and how they are ever tormented by the shadowy suspicion that they may not have chosen the shortest route to get it." — Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835

"How will historians write the story of a city that no longer maintains a record of its own cultural life?" www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

In my debut for @theatlantic.com, I wrote about the disappearance of cultural listings from major New York media outlets, and what it portends for artists, audiences, institutions, and journalists. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

In this interview with a debut novelist (whose book, Saraswati, I really want to read), he says the nicest thing about my book--that it converted him to liking the genre of biography. He doesn't seem to be on Bluesky but if anyone knows how to contact him to say thanks, I would love to get in touch.