The Owl of Minerva

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03nov2024

For if God exists, then He exists in the sewers as in the stars, and in the end, in our own hellish ways, we are each at His service, engaged in the grim business of preventing the world from drowning in its own excreta.
Nick Cave

19oct2024

A person, simply trying to get from one place to another, is transformed into a reluctant star of a movie she didn’t know she was in. The dynamics are simple, and stark. The people on our screens look like characters, so we begin to treat them like characters. And characters are, ultimately, expendable; their purpose is to serve the story. When their service is no longer required, they can be written off the show.
Megan Garber - We’ve Lost the Plot

05oct2024

Hi Ren by Ren and its origin story.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s “Chain of Light” - a new album from Real World Records, released 27 years after his death at the age of 48 in 1997. How it all came about.

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Walt Whitman

22sep2024

As a leader of humans, I’ve watched sadly as valued co-workers have resigned. Each time I work to understand two things:

Why are they leaving?
When did their shields go down?

(..)
The real question, the real insight, comes from the answer to Question #2: When did their shields go down?

Their shields drop when, in the moment they are presented with the offer of potential future opportunity, they quickly evaluate their rubric and make an instant call: Is this job meeting my bar?
Michael Lopp

Stop with the fucking history lessons about what the Israelites did, or what the Ottomans did, or what the British did, or whatever. IT IS FUCKING IMMATERIAL. There is a pile of dog shit in the living room. Instead of arguing about whose dog took the bigger shit in the living room, maybe focus on how we clean up the dog shit, and maybe we keep the dogs outside.
mo husseini, 50 Completely True Things

08sep2024

Dystopian fiction is when you take things that happen in real life to marginalized populations and apply them to people with privilege.
Hugo Book Club

24aug2024

What makes our particular job so exceptional that it requires inspiration or a muse to do it? We are artists and we labour in the service of others. It is not something we do only if and when we feel motivated – we create because it is our responsibility to do so. In this respect our occupation is no different than that of most people. Does an ordinary adult go to work only if they feel in the mood? Do doctors? Do labourers? Do teachers? Do taxi drivers? We are duty-bound to do our job, like everyone else, because the space we occupy depends upon our participation and breaks down if we don’t. A committed artist cannot afford the luxury of revelation. Inspiration is the indolent indulgence of the dabbler. Muses, Tam, are for losers!
Nick Cave

05aug2024

Moonshine pours through my window
The night puts it’s laughter away
Clouds that pierce the illusion
That tomorrow would be as yesterday
Sixto Rodriguez

27jun2024

Devin Kelly’s Ordinary Plots: Meditations on Poems + Verse has been a revelation. Case in point Najwan Darwish’s “On the Third Day”, Mary Oliver’s “Some Questions You Might Ask”, Tariq Alarabi’s “Carob Tree” and so many more. There is a refined elegance to these posts that reflect on, but never dissects, poems from all over.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, in AB. Clarifying, crisp and packs a punch 4.5/5

17jun2024

my theory of fucks. The theory goes like so: you are born with so many fucks to give. However many you’ve got is all there is (…) But I realize now that if you can give a fuck then you must also be able to receive. And that’s the key.

This is one of my answers to the question of, why give a fuck about work? Why love your work? (…) And my answer is: don’t. Don’t give a fuck about your work. Give all your fucks to the living.

(…) But if you give a fuck about the living, about all your living kin in all the kingdoms, they will give a fuck right back.
Mandy Brown

12jun2024

They tried to bury me, they didn’t realise I was a seed.
Sinéad O’Connor

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