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✏️ New Word Learned:

Quaintrelle: a woman who emphasizes a life of passion expressed through personal style, leisurely pastimes, charm, and the cultivation of life’s pleasures; the female equivalent of a dandy.

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Finished reading: Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte 📚

Rejection is an achievement of modern writing. It is an entirely contemporary work that still manages to be thoughtful, deep, and more than funny enough to leave you defenseless. That being said, it is also a deeply uncomfortable book, filled with characters that I know, that I hate, that I pity, and that I see myself in. It seems to me that most authors that try to tackle the consequences of terminal onliness fail by making the technology central. Tulathimutte keeps humanity at the core, even when traversing the strange, the cringe, the uncomfortable, the crude, and the perverse. I want to write a longer post about this book, but only after I talk about it with more people and process the experience that reading this book was. If you have read it, please hmu.

What I will say is this:

  1. The ending of this book is, perhaps, one of the most impressive endings I have ever read and far surpassed my expectations.
  2. More than usual, this book invited people to ask “what are you reading?” I am not sure if it’s the book cover, the title, or something unusual in how engaged I was in the book, but I noticed right away that people were curious about this one. It’s a good conversation starter, which makes me like it more.
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“Money ain’t got no owners, only spenders.”

💬 Omar Little, The Wire

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🎵 R&B recs for the week:

Had to post because it’ll be nothing but Baby Keem after Thursday. 🔥

Bonus: Julia Wolf on Under The Radar

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As a child, I had an inexplicable love for the movie Secondhand Lions, starring the recently deceased Robert Duvall. It’s strange to see how it touches on so many themes that I still find myself pondering to this day: storytelling, virtue, masculinity, wonder, etc… While it is a very simple film, avoiding flourish both in special effects and in writing, it’s sincerity and wholesomeness is achingly absent in today’s media. Near the end of the film, Robert Duvall’s character gives a speech which left quite an impression on me as a child. I suspect that it will play a lot during the RIPs for Robert, but I felt like sharing it anyways:

Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love… true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in.

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Yes, I had to look up the definition of “wuthering.”

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💐 GRATEFUL FOR:

  • Coworkers who cook food for the office
  • Ice Packs
  • Heat Packs
  • Deodorant
  • Friends who dance
  • Corner Booths
  • Bright Socks
  • Rollercoasters
  • Board Games
  • Songs with saxophones
  • Thumbs
  • Weather Reports
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My answer:

  • 🦉: I’m stoked. Owls are so cool.
  • 🦉🦉: I think it’s a lucky day.
  • 🦉🦉🦉: I’m buying a lotto ticket.
  • 🦉🦉🦉🦉: I’m checking for cameras.
  • 🦉🦉🦉🦉🦉: Changing my name & doing the squirrel scene from Rick & Morty.
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🤖 A friend shared Astral Codex Ten’s overview of Moltbook (the AI-only social platform where AI agents are interacting together) and I highly recommend. Whether or not Moltbook is an augury of the future, I don’t know – but it really tickles me to read about.

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💬 In Health is Membership by Wendell Berry:

If an ecosystem loses one of its native species, we now know that we cannot speak of it as itself minus one species. An ecosystem minus one species is a different ecosystem. Just so, each of us is made by—or, one might better say, made as—a set of unique associations with unique persons, places, and things. The world of love does not admit the principle of the interchangeability of parts… In the world of love, things separated by efficiency and specialization strive to come back together.

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🎶 Mentioned this before, but I am becoming a fanatic for Durand Bernarr’s Grammy-winning album, BLOOM. He is a remarkable vocalist. Do yourself a favor and listen to one of these performances:

And I would love for him to do the hook on a hip-hop song.

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✍️ Just dropped some new stanzas: bradley-andrews.com

(Due to formatting, I recommend reading on wide-screen or computer)

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💬 A quote from Soren Kierkegaard for Valentines week:

“What is youth? A dream. What is love? The dream’s content.”

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🎰 Apparently Drake placed a $1 million losing bet on the Patriots yesterday.

Still a better Superbowl for him than last year.

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🗞️ A new dispatch from Mercury’s Playbook is out now:

These are the Mag Sevens, the Michael Jordans, Kendrick Lamars, Albert Einsteins, Warren Buffets, Serena Williams, or Mr. Beasts. Not just excellent operators, but undeniable winners… Just like the formation of actual astronomical stars, star performers are born within extremely unique conditions which, directly or indirectly, provide the materials necessary for their emergence. In astronomy, these environments are called stellar nurseries.

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💿 3 additions to the CD collection from Generation Records in Greenwhich Village:

  • Isley Brothers Story, Volume 1
  • Teddy Pendergrass, Greatest Hits
  • Notorious B.I.G., Ready To Die
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Just a digital note to record that I have waited all night, and am about begin, J. Cole’s The Falloff.

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💬 From Hugh MacLeod:

“The market for something to believe in is infinite.”

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✏ New Word Learned:

Skosh: a small amount, bit, smidgen

According to Merriam’s, “the word skosh comes from the Japanese word sukoshi, which is pronounced “skoh shee” and means “a tiny bit” or “a small amount.” The Japanese word was shortened by U.S. servicemen stationed in Japan after World War II. Later, in the Korean War, a small soldier was often nicknamed Skosh.”