“With all this money and opportunity, a person can no more fail than someone can go hungry at a restaurant that serves all you can eat.”
Dennis Cass on the promise of Silicon Valley (July 2000).
“With all this money and opportunity, a person can no more fail than someone can go hungry at a restaurant that serves all you can eat.”
Dennis Cass on the promise of Silicon Valley (July 2000).
“My lover, the rabbi, developed an anal ailment, not life-threatening, not connected to digestion, not caused by sexual activity, not contagious, not within the purview of most medical practitioners he consulted …” — Wayne Koestenbaum
04.03.2026 17:00 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
“The techno-industrialists believe that America needs to apply modern computing capabilities to industrial production. They believe that technology has drifted too far into the invisible realm of bits or into the digital cloud.” —Maddy Crowell
04.03.2026 13:01 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
“We feel, as her camera takes them in, that the narrator has reached the limit of what she can know about her parents. And perhaps that Hjorth, too, has reached the limit of what she can tell us about this family from the perspective of the wronged daughter.”
04.03.2026 00:00 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
“The merest departure from orthodoxy whipped its theologians into a lather. It’s always enjoyable to see rationalists behaving irrationally, especially when they’re as costive and comically German as this bunch.”
Dan Piepenbring on A Scandal In Königsberg.
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From July 2006: “Now there is no Khomeini, less religiosity, and, instead of specific hatreds, a generalized cynicism toward those who hold political power—whether in Iran or elsewhere.” —Christopher de Bellaigue
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“We often think of the Renaissance as a rediscovery of Greek and Roman thought and of the best of its humanism, but in fact, since time and history move in one direction only, it was less a rebirth than a relearning how to see.” —Nicole Krauss
03.03.2026 18:00 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
“Once, San Francisco drew in runaway children, artists, and freaks; today it’s an enormous magnet for highly agentic young men. I set out to meet them.” — Sam Kriss
03.03.2026 16:00 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
“There is potential for current or planned actions in orbit to cause serious degradation of the orbital environment or lead to catastrophic outcomes.”
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“It was always about that. The search for a lost land. Love. This fucked-up youth, always exploited, betrayed, bribed, lost.”
From Mariella Mehr’s “Nightmare of the Embryos, out in March with New Directions.
“The soap is easily the best addition to the game’s already rock-solid cleaning loop.
There are also new and more varied types of dirt.”
From reviews of the video game PowerWash Simulator 2.
harpers.org/archive/2026...
“Do dogs even care about beauty-pageant success? If people fashion the breed standards, can’t they change them so dogs are healthier? Wouldn’t everyone be happier if we all decided to sculpt clay instead of flesh?” —Andrew Norman Wilson
02.03.2026 16:00 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
“Watching arguably the greatest rikishi in history at the peak of his powers was all that kept many fans from abandoning the scandal-plagued sport, though some still struggled with the fact that he wasn’t Japanese.” — @viajoshhunt.bsky.social
02.03.2026 13:01 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
For the second time in less than a year, the U.S. military has attacked Iran—both times without President Trump seeking congressional approval. Read the argument @chrislehmann.bsky.social made for Trump’s impeachment after the 2025 strikes on nuclear facilities.
28.02.2026 18:30 — 👍 4 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Every month in our Findings column, Rafil Kroll-Zaidi presents a constellation of the most—and least—important scientific discoveries.
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From the March Harper’s Index.
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“Was there ever another painter who so consistently corralled tension, conflict, emotion, and light to scale the apogee of human drama on the canvas?”
Nicole Krauss on Caravaggio and Georges de la Tour.
John Jeremiah Sullivan’s “Twain Dreams” is a finalist in Reviews and Criticism.
harpers.org/archive/2025...
“The Goon Squad,” by Daniel Kolitz, is a finalist in the Features category.
harpers.org/archive/2025...
We’re excited to announce that the American Society of Magazine Editors has recognized Daniel Kolitz’s “The Goon Squad” and John Jeremiah Sullivan’s “Twain Dreams” as finalists for the National Magazine Awards.
27.02.2026 16:58 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0
“Hjorth, a devoted reader of Kierkegaard, subjects the mothers in her novels to a special kind of moral scrutiny.”
Elaine Blair on Vigdis Hjorth.
“Roy Lee is not like other people. He belongs to a new and possibly permanent overclass.”
Sam Kriss reports from San Francisco on the next generation of AI technologists.
harpers.org/archive/2026...
“He’s captured, actually too well, the all-encompassing power of make-believe, which feeds with one hand as it chokes with the other.”
Dan Piepenbring on Robert Coover’s The Universal Baseball Association.
“Trotsky screamed in such a way that Mercader immediately knew that he would never forget the sound as long as he lived.”
From Josh Ireland’s The Death of Trotsky, out with Dutton ( @duttonbooks.bsky.social ).
“As a festival of flattery, the Kennedy Center Honors aligns precisely with the MAGA sensibility.”
Thomas Frank on the culture wars at the Kennedy Center.
“The main premise of ‘techno-industrialism’ was that Silicon Valley might help solve the riddle that had stumped policymakers for more than forty years: how to reverse the tide of deindustrialization in a globalized economy.” —Maddy Crowell
26.02.2026 13:01 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
“Considered as part of Hjorth’s body of work on the story of family abuse, Repetition offers her most sustained attempt to imagine the parents’ morally compromised existence.”
Elaine Blair on the novel Repetition.
What is access to the best journalists, essayists, critics, novelists, and poets every month for only $25.99/year?
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“Night then—we were rolled up together like embryos in strange sheets—was another world. Dormitories, embryos in beds, craving a womb.” —Mariella Mehr
harpers.org/archive/2026...
“In the glow of candlelight or the compassion of a certain kind of attention, all enter equally into the sacred.”
Nicole Krauss on Caravaggio and Georges de la Tour.
harpers.org/archive/2026...
