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There is no such thing as a perfect place on the internet. But it’s possible to avoid the ones that aren’t even pretending to try to be better. The best time to leave Substack was a long time ago. The second best time is now. — Marisa Kabas Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
I went for a run. I’ve been running consistently for over a year and a half now. It’s a panacea for me. I run outside. I like to feel the cool wind on my skin, my pores open and sweating, the legs rhythmically turning over in pursuit of flow. In the beginning, I kept my head down, finding it difficult to smile or look at others. I usually like to connect to people somehow, to remind us of our humanity. Eventually, as the pace got me past the first mile, I started to look up and around. I saw and heard people. A laugh. A morning greeting between co-workers. A one-sided phone exchange. The juxtaposition of the feelings of my country divided and decided, against the backdrop of life as usual was jarring. I wanted to run down the feelings, in search of something: resolution, calm, peace, catharsis, or something else altogether to jettison the overwhelm. My body needs nurturing. It wants to build. It craves maintenance. If you have ever made anything then you know this truth: creation can take hours, months, years. And yet destruction can happen in an instant. Yet we still forge. We have to conceive, design, and construct to satisfy this innate desire. With matters of the physical, the mind, and the heart, upkeep is paramount. Without it, disrepair creeps up quickly. To achieve or progress further, requires even more effort. Sometimes that feels outsized in comparison to how easy it is to slip into decay. My feet took me to over 3 miles around a corner and a mild uphill. The legs started to give, and the crushing feeling in my chest forced me to a stop. I wasn’t having a heart attack. My ire had manifested itself physically, and halted me. I had to let it consume me briefly. I had to have a small breakdown. This was grief tied up in a turd of disappointment. My legs started to walk. Slowly at first, and as I crested the small incline, they got back to it. The feeling of disbelief is a privilege. I’m not surprised. Disappointed and angry, yes. But not surprised. I’ve experienced racism enough times in this country and gone through a lengthy process with immigration to know what this country truly is. Ironically, the racism I've experienced has occurred in cities. And despite being heightened to it when traveling through smaller parts of this country, I haven't knowingly experienced it. The racism is here, in our backyards. But this country is unlike any other. There are good people here, aiming to truly make the world a better place. It can be a place where you can make something out of nothing. That promise has been forgotten in favor of lifting the singular and not the plural. I’ve been able to make a good life for myself, and the many dependents I am responsible for, but that didn’t come easy. This life was hard-fought and hard-earned. I wanted it, and needed to make it happen. My family and loved ones rely on me, and I have a duty to care. My breath settled back in and the legs found their beat again and took me home. Five miles down. Five miles to keep the systems in check. Five miles to strengthen this body, sharpen this mind, and create momentum. As I walked through the door, I realized I found something I’ve had all along: resilience, and the ability to work hard. The work is never done. Let’s get to it. Read on nazhamid.com or Reply via email
If anything, as the well gets poisoned by their own outputs, large language models may well end up eating their own slop and getting their own version of mad cow disease. So this might be as good as they’re ever going to get. — Jeremy Keith I use AI. Not particularly for generative work but to work through code or even to find some semblance of an answer because the very same companies have made search unusable. My work also involves AI, and there's a longer post here about ways that AI might help, but the concerns are real, and I struggle with that balance. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
Stone Temple Pilots’ “Kitchenware & Candybars” comes on, and suddenly I'm 17 again, driving underneath the amber glow of late-night deserted streets in Kuala Lumpur. I can feel the sharp air conditioning in the car against my skin, keeping the tropical heat and humidity outside at bay, while the heady thoughts of my former teenage self wash over me. This isn’t singular to that song or memory. Music is so engrained in my being, noting the notable. A chord, drumbeat or lyric can transport me through my lifetime and to the person I once was. I then exist in this liminal state, suspended between now and then, today and yesterday. Read on nazhamid.com or Reply via email
Eva Decker is a designer engineer who likes playing piano and writing CSS. Currently living in NYC with Samwise. — Eva Decker Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
More in literature
The post Substitute Torture appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
Mikke Reinikainen is a Finnish bowyer who has been carving primitive bows for more than two decades and has made over 600 bows, several hundred of which he still has. He is a longstanding board member in Finland’s largest primitive archery club.
When I have a problem, Johanna—a.k.a. my wife—typically solves it by asking me one of four questions.
George Chapman’s Bussy D’Ambois (c. 1604, pub. 1607) is another play performed by one of London’s boys’ companies. It is a bloody, crazy tragedy disguised as a history, a strange blend of the static Senecan and dynamic Elizabethan play. Chapman’s verse is allusive and compact – I sure needed my edition’s notes – and in places magnificent. It was written for an audience that wanted this kind of verse, this density of reference, and that had a sophisticated understanding of theatrical convention. Sophisticated, jaded, I don’t know. Anyway, they paid more than Shakespeare’s audience, and not just to sit in a theater with a roof. No groundlings at Bussy D’Ambois. Incidentally, reading in this period (1598-1608) the importance of the adult vs boys’ company distinction. The ambitious, highbrow, satirical, meta-textual plays were at the boys’ theater. Jonson, Marston, Chapman, they wanted the intellectual prestige of the boys’ companies. Meanwhile, over at the crass commercial adult company, Shakespeare was producing King Lear, so things did not work out exactly as expected. In fairness, those adult companies also clearly churned out a lot of junk. Anyway, Bussy D’Ambois. He is a French soldier who briefly becomes a successful courtier despite being rude, belligerent, and sarcastic. He offends everyone around him except for the king’s brother, and eventually the king, who like that he is not the usual empty flatterer. Everyone else hates him, though, and you can guess how the tragedy ends. The core conceit of the character is quite good. Bussy imagines himself as a man of perfect integrity, but what if he is unconsciously as Machiavellian a schemer as anyone else at court. He has just promised the king’s brother, Monsieur, that he will do anything to serve him but kill the King: MONSIEUR: … and thy gall Turns all thy blood to poison, which is cause Of that Tode-poole that stands in my complextion; And makes thee (with a cold and earthie moisture, Which is the damme of putrification, As plague to thy damn’d pride) rot as thou liv’dst; To study calumnies and treacheries; To thy friends slaughters, like a Scrich-owle sing, And to all mischiefs, but to kill the King. (III.2) Much of the verse is of this quality. Here the love interest, Tamyra, is not debating but rather feeling, in monologue form, the conflict between her loyalty to her husband and her new love for Bussy: TAMYRA: Now all the peacefull regents of the night, Silently gliding exhalations, Languishing windes, and murmuring fals of waters, Sadnesse of heart, and ominous securenesse, Enchantments, dead sleepes, all the friends of rest, That ever wrought upon the life of man, Extend your utmost strengths… (II.2) Marvelous stuff for actors and readers with a taste for blank verse. I often had some doubts about what I would understand sitting in the audience. On the one hand, as the editor of my edition writes, “eight men die, a woman is tortured, a maid is stabbed, several devils are raised and a ghost appears to a roll of thunder” (p. 345). Pretty exciting. On the other, speeches are highly rhetorical, monologues discourse on envy and flattery and other elevating topics, often paraphrasing or translating Plutarch and others, and five of those deaths occur offstage during a three-way duel, all described in a terrific messenger scene full of Homeric metaphor – “Storme-like he fell, and hid the feare-cold Earth” (II.1) – also exciting, buy why is the duel not onstage? It would not be onstage in Seneca. There is a deep nicke in times restlesse wheele For each mans good, when which nicke comes it strikes; As Rhetoricke, yet workes not perswasion, But only is a meane to make it worke… (I.1) My text has been the fine, aside from the small type, Penguin Renaissance Dramatists edition of Chapman’s Plays and Poems (1998). I am currently reading another Chapman play, The Widdowes Teares, which is Bussy D’Ambois but as comedy. But the next play from my tattered schedule is Ben Jonson’s Epicœne, or The Silent Woman (1609 or 1610). It is likely that the main role was played by young Nathan Field, whose first big hit role was Bussy D’Ambois.
