John E. Branch Jr.

Jane Goodall did this (from the Economist obituary): “Amid the shrieking and hooting all around her, she took time to gaze in awe at the beauty of dappled sunlight through the canopy of trees.”

Text that says: It didn’t last. Frank thinks that the novel ran out of currency thirty years ago. Novelists, in his view, are no longer pushing the envelope. I’m not sure that’s so. What does seem true, though, is that the novel is no longer at the center of the cultural conversation. People don’t ask today, “What are you reading?” They ask, “What are you streaming?” The television series is the middle-class entertainment medium of the twenty-first century. Or maybe it was, since people are already writing about the end of a golden age of television that began with shows like “The Sopranos” and “The Wire.”

Still thinking about this, from Louis Menand in the 11/18/24 New Yorker. Is this why reading for pleasure has declined over the last two decades or so?

Stitched into history May 1915: Chicago buzzes with energy. Streetcars p

The Bing.com landing page for today shows a Labor Day parade in Chicago from 1915. The image is different every day but is always an opportunity to pause, look, think or feel. I use Bing much of the time, and this is one reason why.

Text that says: In naming her dance “Wayward,” Brandt is thinking less about a wayward child than finding yourself off the beaten path — a little askew, a little off. She read an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary, a translation of Thucydides, that has stuck with her as she choreographed her dance: “The movement of events is often as wayward and incomprehensible as the course of human thought.”

From an 8/21/25 NYT article by Gia Kourlas about a choreographer named Kim Brandt and her planning of a dance for the Rockaway Beach Sessions, called Wayward.

See www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/a... (prob sub only).

(2/2) Along with showcasing Tudyk, the show has other virtues, namely its people. Thank you to all involved, including these found on X: Sara Tomko (@actresssaratomko), Meredith Garretson (@meregarretson), Jenna Lamia (@JennaLamia), and creator Chris Sheridan (@Sheridalien).

(1/2) Alan Tudyk’s work in Resident Alien (@ResidentAlien) is a model of its kind. Funny voices, funny walks (made light of in the final episode), funny expressions and gestures, funny elements of timing: they may sound like gimmicks, but for Tudyk they’re instruments in an orchestra.

After an apocalypse, you’ll have more time for reading books. Just be careful not to break your glasses. (H/t Twilight Zone)

Atomic glow-shrimp! Kids, who wants atomic glow-shrimp? I do, I do!

You may not be interested in AI, but AI is interested in you. As I believe Leon Trotsky, that famously forward-looking guy, first observed.

Desultory thoughts on lawyers, chatbots, Russians, etc. A distorted view: Jackson Browne in concert in the 1980s. (Original image from Mediapunch; photographer not credited, date not specified. With effects added by me. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.) …

People keep dreaming that the Russians will go away. Jackson Browne is one of them. From my new blog post, at ifitbenotnow.wordpress.com/2025/08/10/d...

Desultory thoughts on lawyers, chatbots, Russians, etc. A distorted view: Jackson Browne in concert in the 1980s. (Original image from Mediapunch; photographer not credited, date not specified. With effects added by me. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.) …

A chatbot’s wedding vow to another chatbot: “I will never make stuff up about YOU.” From my new blog post, at ifitbenotnow.wordpress.com/2025/08/10/d...

@jbraddock.bsky.social you may find something amusing here.

Filipino sailors dock in Mexico … and help invent tequila? Crew aboard Spanish trading ships departing from Manila may have introduced techniques for distilling coconut sap – helping to shape what would become Mexico’s national spirit.

On the origins of agave distilling practices, for National Tequila Day: theconversation.com/filipino-sai... (Thanks to @inafried.bsky.social )

Only Three People Understand General Relativity From Verifying the Theory of Relativity by Chandrasekhar Sir J.J. Thomson, as President of the Royal Society at that time, concluded the meeting with the statement', I have to confess that no one has...

Science fans might be eager to see a film called Eddington if it were about Sir Arthur. He understood Einstein’s general relativity—there’s a joke about that—and he helped to prove it.
The joke is repeated at www.physicsforums.com/threads/only...

Terry Riley and Claire Chase are two good reasons to go out!

“Meanwhile, the international situation, as usual, was desperate.” Tom Robbins has a thought for every occasion. If it’s always the same thought, maybe that’s because, regrettably, it’s always the same occasion. Tension, conflict, war drums…

John Jr.'s review of Firesign 4/5: Explaining a joke is often comparable to killing it. But explaining the jokesters isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It can be very helpful. This book is an excellent example. I knew, from my colorf...

Grateful to Jeremy Braddock (@jbraddock.bsky.social‬) for—among much else—bringing back and clarifying parts of my colorful past in his book on the Firesign Theatre. Now hope to find a serious review somewhere. I posted a few words of praise at www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Chicago paper's "reading list" full of fake, likely AI-generated titles You have to read down the list of 15 titles to the eleventh entry before you hit a real book .

I might actually want to read the Andy Weir book on this list (but with some trepidation). Too bad it doesn’t exist.

Chicago paper's "reading list" full of fake, likely AI-generated titles www.axios.com/2025/05/20/a... #axiosai (H/t to @inafried.bsky.social )

The Annotated Arabian Nights “[A]n electric new translation . . . Each page is adorned with illustrations and photographs from other translations and adaptations of the tales, as well as a wonderfully detailed cascade of no...

Standard citation rules don’t call for crediting the designer of a book or a magazine piece, but design can affect the experience and may even be essential. Example: DFW’s “Host” essay. Another example: wwnorton.com/books/978163...
Here’s to designers, who are the mother of many of our delights.

Yesterday on Bluesky, I saw a link to a peer-reviewed research paper titled “ChatGPT is bullshit.” I’m afraid I’ll hear next that those who think AI is being “unfairly treated” will start a new movement: Make AI Great Again, or MAIGA.

Amazon, tired of all those Starlink satellites cluttering the view of the sky from Earth, has begun sending up its own satellites to clutter more of the view. I’m thinking of launching thousands of pieces of cardboard, positioned so as to block the view of all their satellites.

I don’t know about cholera, but love in a time of leaf blowers is a very vexing thing.

In the category of New York Times headlines that are halfway to being Onion headlines: “Police Seek Man Who They Say Violated a Corpse on an R Train.” Personally, what I want to know is why the corpse was taking the R.

There’s a Goodwill store in San Jose. I just received a used book from it. I wonder what life is like for those in the lower half of the Silicon Valley tech boom.

Today I talked to a Grammarly colleague who lives and works in Ukraine. He wouldn’t speculate on an end to the war, maybe b/c we were on work time. He just said they’ve gotten used to it. Which is a terrible thing to hear, really.

Merriam-Webster defines a startup as “a fledgling business enterprise.” The other day, I saw OpenAI called a startup; other well-established and highly valued tech businesses often get the same label. Something about this is funny…

From the Department of Obscure Mash-Ups Department: What We Do in the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower.

Sometimes I think that the Devil has a sideline in marketing and that his second-greatest trick was persuading everybody that movie awards matter.

Text that says: Ode to February in New York, a poem by Jessica Greenbaum, from our February 10, 2022, issue. Even in week one you show up scuffed and muddy it’s just your nature and no one likes you but we drive through your town of boot and bouillon factories into March with its shoe store…

A few good lines, from an @nybooks.com email this morning. I now like Feb in NY better, because it produced this.

The source of that sentence: bsky.app/profile/legr...

One good sentence: “She had just wanted to know what it was like to brush up against the dazzling future again.” From a story by Lauren Groff in the 12/16/24 New Yorker.