RIP, John le Carré, who transformed the spy novel into spellbinding works of art through a kind of magic I still don’t understand.
“It’s difficult to say what I mean,” you said. “I don’t know how to describe where we are now.”
“Uncharted territory,” I said. “The parts on the maps of our lives that we don’t understand. In cartographer’s language they call these places sleeping beauties.”
—Christopher Barzak
—found in The Love We Share Without Knowing (2008)
subdolous · /SUB-də-ləs/ · /ˈsʌbdələs/. adjective. Crafty, sly, clever, cunning. From Latin dolus (cunning).
Such impenetrable prudence on all sides had often blunted the subdolous ingenuity of the architect and plotter of comedies! (Isaac Disraeli)
He was her counterpart, her mate, this gross man with the many-wrinkled, square-set jaw, with the stolid bull-neck, with his bloated, vulpine face and his subdolous green eyes. (Arthur Stringer)
…his through-tried fidelity shall frustrate the force of any subdolous whisperings in the Ears of His Majesty. (William Petty)
2020 isn’t all bad news → What Explains the Decline of Serial Killers?
Amazing → AlphaFold: a solution to a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology ※ And for a much more in-depth look → AlphaFold2 @ CASP14
The Pudding strikes again → Who’s in the Crossword?
“The more we can google, the less we know” → Easy Answers
Putting herself in the picture → 100 Days of Art History Jinjins
2020 Interactive Fiction Awards ※ Orthogonally → Verse by Verse
A headline for 2020 → India’s bull semen industry could be used to fight Covid-19
What Does History Smell Like? ※ Perhaps a little bit like old paper → Rebus Broadsides
Refrigerator poetry without all the irritated prying of little magnets → frij.io
Today in 1642, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, two weeks after discovering an island that would later be named Tasmania, sights another “new” land that he names Staten Landt, believing it to be joined to a land mass of the same name at the tip of South America. As it turned out, it was an island, later named Nova Zeelandia, Nieuw Zeeland and finally New Zealand. Of course, New Zealand was settled nearly 400 years before by a Polynesian people that would become known as the Māori. Māori means ordinary or natural, distinguishing the mortals from the spirits called wairua.
▸ Animated Maps: A Century of UFO Sightings ※ Pairs with → The intriguing maps that reveal alternate histories
▸ Japanese synchronized walking Competition
Facebook monopoly (because boring game) ☡ The PS5 (because I stopped playing games after I died of dysentery on the Oregon Trail ☡ Big Business winning Cover (because obscene) ☡ US Federal executions (because barbarism)
Thanks to all who gave me the gift of sharing this newsletter with others. It means a lot to me. Letters next time.
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