Anna Gát: What to Read this Weekend #4
Philosophers in love, the Pentagon Papers, quantum theory, remote work and fertility, the ups and downs of book publishing, Adam Gopnik on text, the purported death of the humanities, and more...
Adam Gopnik’s pursuit of the perfect sentence
Gopnik is consumed by the business of shaping sentences, and in The Real Work his dabbling in new skills, and observing those who’ve mastered them, unsurprisingly offers a way of reflecting on his own vocation. In At the Strangers’ Gate, he recalls producing his own “first true sentence”: “I am a student at the Institute of Fine Arts, and I work part-time at the Frick Art Reference Library.” What made this sentence particularly “true”? - New Statesman
Agnes Callard's Marriage of the Minds
“Six and a half weeks ago, I fell in love for the first time,” she began. “You did not think I was a person who would subject her children to divorce. You did not think I was a person who would be married to someone she had not fallen in love with. You are not sure whether you know me anymore.” - The New Yorker
On the one hand it’s critical that all members of the jury feel able to share their opinions freely. On the other you have to achieve unanimity. - Nick Harkaway
Experimental exchange of grins between quantum Cheshire cats
Quantum paradoxes, which exhibit counterintuitive phenomena, have provided multiple perspectives in study of the fundamentals of quantum mechanics, from Bell non-locality, quantum contextuality to macro-realism. Recently, the quantum Cheshire cat Gedankenexperiment, presented by Aharonov et al., illustrated the counterintuitive phenomenon that a physical property can be disembodied from its physical carrier, akin to the scene A grin without a cat in the story Alice in Wonderland. - Nature
Instead of treating dating as a self-serving enterprise, what if we made a conscious effort to approach it as a joint venture? In Rethinking Sex, Christine Emba talks about “willing the good of the other” as a solution to make sex (and dating) less bad. - Elaine Wang, Interintellect
Will remote work promote more family formation?
Remote work might promote family formation in a few ways. Remote workers can move more easily, because they don’t have to live within commuting distance of their job. This flexibility might result in more marriages by ending the “two-body problem,” where romantic partners find employment in different cities and must choose between their career and their relationship. What’s more, remote work reduces commutes, and those weekly hours can be shifted to family time, making it easier to start or grow a family. - Via Tyler Cowen / Marginal Revolution
If you let dark energy go really far into the future—so we’re now at like 1030 years in the future, which is a number that is too large to make any sense—you do start taking apart your gravitationally bound system, because you’re pulling space and expanding things so rapidly that you flatten everything out again. - Brian Gallagher / Nautilus
Through the second half of the 20th century, the opening up of the university to the outside world and the work valued in that world aligned. Being able to appreciate a Thelonious Monk record or a Miller play or the wild sprawl of a Pynchon novel was a widely held objective. - The New Yorker
Scientist, essayist, and novelist Erik Hoel joins Twitter creator Visakan Veerasamy, Interintellect editorial lead Christin Balan, and Interintellect founder Anna Gát to discuss talent, Substack, audience capture, community, controversy, gatekeepers, academic bureaucracy -- why we need more and better fiction, why science is really not that different from art, and how there is a place for all of us. - Interintellect
The Case for American Seriousness
It is unserious to watch the most educated generation in American history not be able to afford a starter home. - Katherine Boyle / The Free Press
Seymour Hersh on Daniel Ellsberg, the Man Who Exposed the Pentagon Papers
I had done my bit in exposing the My Lai massacre and publishing a book about it in 1970. I was then in the process of writing a second book on the Army’s cover-up of the slaughter. “Hell, no,” I thought to myself, “No way I would go to jail — especially for telling an unwanted truth.” - Jacobin
Why are famous writers suddenly terrible when they write on Substack?
Unlike George Saunders and Brandon Taylor, author Sherman Alexie’s Substack is primary poems and lyric personal essays, which is far harder to pull off. - Erik Hoel
I need a Agnes callard drops new writing app