3/21 in the belly of the fish
5,500 ab workouts & going down the rabbit hole of david foster wallace
Happy April all!
I just want to start by congratulating myself on my 30-day streak on 3 different language apps for learning German. Prost 🍻
The apps I have been using & loving are DuoLingo, Drops, and Lingvist. Ich denke sie sind toll!
Okay, let’s get to it! This month, I read a lot of articles so that’s gonna be the bulk of my suggestions. And some photos & music along the way.
Wellness & Fitness 💪
1000-ab-challenge by Blogilates — I am actually so proud of myself for doing this incredibly taxing challenge out of the blue. Shoutout to my accountability partner Rachel 💜
Books & TV 📚 📺
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace
WandaVision on Disney+
Justice League (Snyder Cut) on HBO — this is not a good movie but it is entertaining
Articles 💬 🗞 = substack
What I Want to Know of Kindness by Devin Kelly — Poignant reflection on grief, kindness, masculinity, and friendship.
The question is not: what does a world without suffering look like? The question is: what does a world look like where suffering is not what calls forth a man’s kindness?
Farther Away by Jonathan Franzen — A beautiful bringing together the history of the English novel, the grief of losing a close friend to suicide, the anger too, the social implications of individualism, the saturation of entertainment, how we manage discontentment. This is an amazing piece of commemoration, the sheer honesty of Franzen and his going agains the grain of public perception of Wallace.
🗞 There Can Be No Bargaining with Vice by Sarah M. Albers
The Identity Hoaxers by Helen Lewis — on the recent uptick of people who have been outed as identity fakers.
‘Bad History and Worse Social Science Have Replaced Truth’ by Len Gutkin— This is an amazing essay on the role of academics in the struggle for liberation, and the importance of truth and intellectual honesty. (Related piece by Leslie M. Harris)
The Rise of Therapy-Speak by Katy Waldman
🗞 #44: Sex in Hindsight by Haley Nahman — on looking back at sexual assault, labeling it assault, and the process of self-mythologizing in its aftermath
Where Did Conversation Go? by Joseph M. Keegin
Building an Alliance Sacrée by Ahmed al-Dakhil — Between this article, and the clubhouse chat between MC Hammer and Zena Hitz, I am about one intellectual push away from committing myself into the Islamic equivalent of a nunnery or a farmers commune that’s largely off the grid. 🌾
Karen Green: 'David Foster Wallace's suicide turned him into a "celebrity writer dude", which would have made him wince' by Tim Adams — I have dived a little deeper into the life of David Foster Wallace this month and reading this interview with his widow was really hard.
The bizarre tale of the world's last lost tourist, who thought Maine was San Francisco by Andrew Chamings
🗞 You Can't Censor Away Extremism (or Any Other Problem) by Freddie deBoer
(cw) A Pedophile's Playground by Anna Slatz — Slatz posed as a 13-year-old girl on two different chat rooms targeted towards children and teens and wrote about the predatory behavior she saw that is pervasive and completely unchecked.