Weekend Reads v. 20.9.2024
We see you, autumn!
Summer has packed her bags and is awaiting the cue to exit stage left just in time for autumnal equinox to visit us on Sunday. Where I live, people know we aren’t out of the woods when it comes to weather. The calendar may say pumpkin spice and everything nice, but we all know a blistering hot and humid spell could befall us at any moment between now and December. Odds of hot weather ruining a perfect autumn weekend increase if you decide to sport boots, an on-trend barn jacket, and that felted wool hat you bought in Bozeman. (Reader, that person was me. I bought the felted wool hat in Bozeman and have zero regrets.)
Here’s to a weekend spent saying a fond farewell to summer and offering a perfectly crisp and chilly welcome to autumn.
Crocheted sneakers are apparently a thing. I don’t know what to tell you.
I shall soon miss Paul Kingsnorth’s series on holy wells in Ireland. This week he shared the 49th of 50 wells.
I can’t stop thinking about the wisdom of an article that ran on The Free Press called The Lost Art of Waiting.
As life gets faster, we have become more impatient about everything, including the interactions of daily life. Not long ago, New York Times technology reporter Nick Bilton wrote a screed against what he called “time-wasting forms of communication.” For Bilton, who uses X to stay in touch with his mother, this includes most of the things that used to be called pleasantries.
“In the age of the smartphone, there is no reason to ask once-acceptable questions: the weather forecast, a business phone number, a store’s hours. But some people still do,” he complains, before quoting a source who confesses: “I have decreasing amounts of tolerance for unnecessary communication because it is a burden and a cost.”
The problem isn’t that Bilton and others prefer a world without pleasantries; such people have always existed. It’s their expectation that efficiency in human interactions is innately superior, an ideal that society should embrace. As technology scholar Evan Selinger has written, this model “turns maintaining important relationships into mere to-do list items.” The dystopian writer Aldous Huxley was, perhaps characteristically, more apocalyptic, arguing in a letter to George Orwell in 1949 that “a felt need for increased efficiency” would turn the world into a “nightmare.” - Christine Rosen
Men and women were surveyed on the “most and least attractive male hobbies” and now I have a lot of googling to because I don’t know what some of these hobbies are. Or maybe it’s best that way?
This list of recipes for comfort are handy for those times someone you love is going through a hard time. Or for when you are going through a hard time.
The death of the minivan, the perfect vehicle. (The Atlantic)
Chipotle unveiled a new avocado machine, and they are calling it “cobot” (Really? That’s the best they could come up with??). It takes Cobot “26 seconds to fully flesh out the fruit inside an avocado.”
This essay makes a bold claim! “Solving Every Travel Problem.”
I collect the names of gorgeous hotels in the hopes that one day I strike it very rich and can visit them all. This one in particular stopped me in my tracks. It’s jaw-droppingly beautiful!
Random trend of the week over on social media: “bleeding” candles for Halloween.
Thinking of trying this peanut butter. It’s described as” Just Argentinian peanuts and Patagonian Sea salt; NO additives; Sweet, but no sugar; Looks cure on your counter.” Sold!
Take good care!