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“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly…
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“In the karaoke universe, we can be whoever we want. We express ourselves by turning into colorful and disastrous parodies of pop stars who are already appalling parodies of human beings. And somehow, that’s how we end up as our most sincere version of ourselves. When you step into the song, you’re not sure who…
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“It is well to have some water in your neighborhood, to give buoyancy to and float the earth. One value of even the smallest well is, that when you look into it, you see that the earth is not continent, but insular.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden At the time I noted this quote in…
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I’ve been going through my reading notes about a book written by Rob Sheffield called “On Bowie.” So, I came to this chapter about this movie called ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ from the 70s. Before I even read the chapter, I came to the conclusion that Emily and I needed to sit down…
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Here are my CRAP reflections on Chapter 15 of Longinus’ “On the Sublime.” Criticism Longinus begins this chapter by emphasizing the importance of phantasia, or visualization: “…dignity, grandeur, and urgency are to a very large degree derived from visualization (phantasia).” He distinguishes this from the mere production of images. Instead, phantasia is a vital mental…
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In Chapter 14 of “On the Sublime” Longinus lays out one of the most radical creative challenges in literary history: “We too… should carefully consider how perhaps Homer might have said this very thing, or how Plato, or Demosthenes, or (in history) Thucydides, might have given it sublimity.” Criticism Longinus doesn’t just ask writers to…
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Longinus, in Chapter 13 of On the Sublime, offers a compelling meditation on imitation and inspiration: “[T]here is another way that leads to sublimity… It is the imitation and emulation of the greater writers and poets of the past… For many authors are inspired by the spirit of others…” Criticism Longinus views sublimity not as…
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Chapter 18 of Carl Sagan’s book “Billions and Billions” is called “The Twentieth Century” and begins with a couple of interesting quotes. I’ll reproduce them as they are quoted in full. Sagan lists three broad innovations of the twentieth century: All three Sagan says “have been brought forth by science and technology, a sword with…
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“I do believe there is life after death. But it’s nothing like the Christian belief of heaven and hell. I believe it’s more like a weird sort of purgatory. Some of our energy is passed on to other living beings. Our consciousness, I feel, drifts about, sometimes remaining anchored for a time, potentially a long…
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“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.” – Cory Doctorow Jared Henderson included this quote in a July 2025 video…