I wanted to start this month with a bit of catch-up, posting some things from earlier in the year that I intended to write about earlier but, for one reason or another, never did. First is a pair of articles from the New Yorker: “A Lake in Florida is Suing to Protect Itself,” by Elizabeth …
Author: johnmfrench
September and October, 2022
I somehow missed posting in September, so I’m making up for it with a longer than usual update. “The Death Cheaters,” by Courtney Shea Longevity House is a…facility? club? community? in Toronto, run by Michael Nguyen, who made his name (and his money) making very expensive bespoke suits for the rich and famous. It costs …
August 2022
I have a relatively short list this month, because we’re going to be traveling and I want to get this out before that. “The Rise of the Worker Productivity Score,” by Jodi Kantor and Arya Sundaram, discusses the increasingly common use of systems that continually track employees to measure how much of their time at …
July 2022
First, you’ve probably already seen the first images from the James Webb telescope, but I for one am not tired of them yet. This tweet puts the “deep field” image into perspective . “Revenge of the Earthworms” by Moira Donovan The spread of jumping worms throughout the United States, and now Canada, threatens the health …
June 2022
The debut album from Japanese artists Hatis Noit came out toward the end of June, after what seems like a very long wait. It’s (almost?) entirely made from vocal sounds, manipulated and duplicated. There are points where it reminds me a little of Lisa Gerard and Dead Can Dance (the beginning of “Angelus Novus”, for …
April & May 2022
Once again, I’ve fallen behind, so this will be a double post for two months. I know I’m a long way from alone in being worried about the current state of American politics. I could, unfortunately, being referring to many different things under that heading, but at the moment I mainly mean the intensity of …
February-March 2022
I presented at a conference at the beginning of March, and getting ready for that left me with little time to write here. So, I’m combining two month’s worth of internet. “Are You Sure You Know What a Photograph Is“?, by Rasher Haq This is a question I’ve been thinking about for some time—since we …
January 2021
A bit of a grab-bag of things I read, and found interesting, over the last month: Unearthing The Truth, in The Economist, is about recent discoveries in Great Zimbabwe, a medieval state after which the modern country is named. It was a major regional power and the center of a complex trading network; it is …
December 31
Getting this one in just under the wire, so that I will have fulfilled my resolution to write at least one post a month. I know it’s not an original sentiment, but this has been a weird year— one in which time has seemed especially elastic. 2021 went by very fast, but at the same …
November 2021
November 2021 I’m late for this month, and I have a pretty short list. “The Untold History of Sushi in America”, by Daniel Fromson (with illustrations by Igor Bastidas) explains how the Unification Church— whose adherents are also known, presumably offensively, as the Moonies, after church founder Reverend Sun Myung Moon— was a major factor …