A quick(ish) but still good(ish) newsletter this week due to travel. Tell your friends (about the newsletter, not my travel).
WORK
The wood-road was not a place for common noisy conversation; one would interrupt the birds and all the still little beasts that belonged there. But it was mortifying to find how strong the habit of idle speech may become in one’s self. One need not always be saying something in this noisy world.
—Sarah Orne Jewett
—from “A Dunnett Shepherdess”
—found in The Country of the Pointed Firs and Selected Short Fiction (1896)
WORD(S)
eristic /ə-RIS-tik/. adjective or noun. Of, given, or relating to, argument, particularly argument for its own sake. A person who engages in such (usually tedious) debates. From Greek eristikos, from erizein (wrangle), from eris (strife). In Greek mythology, Eris was the goddess of discord and discontent.
“Socrates himself was said to have disapproved of this enthusiasm of his: ’On seeing Eucleides devoting himself to eristic arguments, he said, ”You’ll be able to associate with sophists, Eucleides, but not at all with human beings." (Robin Hard)
“…the eristic preoccupation with victory displaces any commitment to truth.” (Gilbert Ryle)
“The Aneristic Principle is that of order, the Eristic Principle is that of disorder. On the surface, the Universe seems (to the ignorant) to be ordered; this is the aneristic illusion.” (Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson)
“Eristic is what contrarianism is all about. Although the main reason for its prevalence in contemporary public debate is that controversies, quarrels, exposés and attacks sell newspapers and get people switching on their television sets, there is another reason besides. This is that the public media think they are engaging in dialectic on whatever happens to be the hot topic of the day, when despite their good intentions they are in fact promoting eristic.” (A. C. Grayling)
WEB
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“We think the next school shooter could be your son.” → Targeted: A Family and the Quest to Stop the Next School Shooter
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There may be no end to Mr. Rogers’ awesomeness, generally, but most definitely in his amazing ear for language. → Mr. Rogers Had a Simple Set of Rules for Talking to Children
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When linguistics and science and chart nerdery unite → Phonetic Periodic Table Poster
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Infantilizing? Maybe. Complicated? You bet. → Digital Wellness for Grown Ups
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Also…complicated. → The House Unanimously Passed a Bill to Make Child Sex Robots Illegal
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This one triggered some feels… → The Difference Between Being Broke and Being Poor
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Today in Twitterbots, LMAO edition → Tweets by Wheel Of Fortune Answers (@wofanswers) via the excellent Pop Loser, “a weekly newsletter of innumerable confusions and a profound feeling of despair.”
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The lavishly illustated story of the beautiful Reforma font. Three fully featured families of typeface goodness. Did I mention that it’s free?
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50 [mostly] ingenious logos with hidden meanings
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Today in 1849, poet, novelist and short story writer Sarah Orne Jewett is born in South Berwick, Maine. Jewett began publishing at just 19, with stories—like her later longer work—notable for a keen ear for local color and dialogue. Often compared to Flaubert, and a strong influence on later writers including Willa Cather, Jewett’s 1909 New York Times obituary observed that she was “regarded as one of the foremost women writers of America,” and her reputation has only increased in the intervening years. For your reading pleasure, a baker’s dozen of Jewett’s books free on Project Gutenberg.
WATCH/WITNESS
► “Robin Williams met Koko in 2001.”
WHAT!?
A platform floats in a neutral space. Strange men, identical except for the numbers on their back, appearing as though out of some dystopian future, must work in concert to prevent the platform from tipping. The emergence of a strange box, a new development in this closed and sterile space, disrupts the tedium but also the teamwork…
► Balance
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
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