Sunday Selection 2021-10-10

Summer is saying goodbye here in New England, there are pops of red and yellow among the green and the weather is starting to get cooler (while staying more cloudy than I would like it to be). To me, summer felt like a long period of rest, and though COVID still abounds, life is more normal now than not. I have something of a social life again, I’m going out to restaurants (though preferably outdoors, while the weather holds up), and I’m going in to a physical office a couple days a week. Life finds a way.

Today, we have a couple of closely related articles, and after a long time, some book talk. By the way, I realized that I have access to a New York Times subscription via my institution, so expect to see more links to their articles in the future. Since they will be paywalled to most readers, I’ll try to keep them from taking up too much space.

Keep Track of the Tiny Details and Keep Keeping a Logbook

The first of these was from the beginning of the pandemic, when as the sameness of the days kept building, time seemed to become meaningless. The second is from now, when I, for one, have been having a hard time readjusting to the flow of time, and trying to keep at bay the feeling of it slipping through my fingers like so much time. Like the author I find keeping a log of some sort to be helpful. One day I might go back through them and take a look at all the entries, but for now it reminds me that today I did and experienced things I did not yesterday.

The Inner Ring of the Internet and Rewilding Your Attention

Attention is, of course, intimately related to the passage of time. After all, what is attention but the investment of time (intentionally or not)? These days, as the ills of algorithmic social media become increasingly apparent, reclaiming our attention seems to be coming to the forefront of our collective consciousness. As these posts tell us, being aware of where our attention is and why is crucial, both in terms of creation and consumption. In particular, while algorithms may be tuned to show us what’s popular, that’s not necessarily the same as what’s good or important.

Epicene design information

The unassuming title of this articles belies the rich treasure trove of history and culture that it contains. I am certainly a type nerd, though I’m not always interested in the history behind particular designs or trends. But this piece managed to weave together the history of a set of typefaces, the social, economic and political contexts surrounding them, and placed them in relevant cultural contexts of gender and changing tastes. It’s a long read, but very much worth it.

The Lonely City by Olivia Laing

I finally managed to finish Olivia Laing’s wonderful book on loneliness, which as I’ve mentioned before, defies neat summarization. It’s a memoir, a history book, cultural and artistic critique, and much more than the sum of its parts. Though maybe not quite as relevant as it was a year ago, I think we will come to look at it as being essentially timeless.

I decided to revisit my youth by picking up a copy of the Silmarillion that I’m now pouring through. That being said, I think I ought to finally read Dune before the movie comes out.