Podcaster. Writer. π Hello, I want us to go from simply having conversations, to actively creating better conversations β https://craigconstantine.com/ has more about me, and my ongoing projects.
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Just say no
Nick Cave’s mother had years of advice largely unheeded β and then one day simply said “head high and⦔ and that was it. In that spirit, the issue builds its own complete sentence: No. Then, immediately after, Yes β to the one correct next thing. Wagashi changes with the seasons at a Japanese garden in…
Hidden gems
A list of 101 movies that all tied for last place among 2,000 greatest films β each recommended by exactly one person and no one else β turns out to be a surprisingly superior guide to being surprised and delighted than any Top 10 list. Around it: commonplace books as the original solution to the…
I accept
A funeral procession ascending Mt Haguro’s cedar-lined stone stairway in summer mist β on the same path BashΕ walked in 1689 β arrives alongside a hard-won insight about knowledge systems: Grimoire, the personal digital grimoire, has finally revealed that any incantation found within can never simply be incanted. Knowledge without experience and expertise is only…
Branded
The word “brand” carries two definitions sitting in horrible proximity to each other β a company’s product identity, and a mark burned into livestock, criminals, or slaves. From there: Godin on skipping the clown car, Feynman on leaving the door to the unknown ajar, and a useful exit ramp from the over-thinking spiral β asking…
Obliged to respond
The pen is a physical reminder that you’re not reading passively β you have an obligation to respond. The Muse, meanwhile, rewards those it finds working, and scoffs at the ones who think they’ll just remember. The issue also reveals that the nose is actually two noses working in alternating cycles somehow connected to the…
Try steeper
You can see your own white blood cells moving through your own eye by staring at a blue sky β which is either the takeaway, or evidence that wonders never cease, or something else entirely. The issue also features Aldous Huxley’s defense of Latin grammar as excellent preparation for life not as it ought to…
I am a creative
Addicted to the adrenaline rush of postponement β and then, these days, to abandoning the thing entirely β opens an issue that finds an unexpected parallel in gerrymandering: one side draws the map, the other side chooses how to assemble it into districts, and like the fairest way to split a piece of cake, the…
Do not hoard ideas
Annie Dillard’s instruction to spend it all, every time β give it now, something better will arise for later, like well water filling from beneath β arrives in an issue that also notes, with some honesty, that building clever systems is just another way to hide. Trees carry their entire temporal and geographic history in…
Why not?
The Atlantic telegraph cable β why not run it directly from Newfoundland to Ireland, under the narrowest point of the ocean? β arrives alongside tree planters living in bush camps, moving through clear-cut blocks that qualify firmly as type-3 fun: not fun now, mistakes have been made, life choices need reconsidering, cautionary tale forthcoming. In…
148 lines
Tolkien went home from a dinner argument and wrote 148 lines of heroic couplet. Most of us run down rabbit holes too β just not with writing. The issue moves from Pressfield’s witch’s brew of morning dread to an unexpected discovery: that sleeping off the rigid schedule and doing half as much the next day…