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Katexic Clippings (ARCHIVE)

from Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller)

I ran down eleven flights with a pen in my hand today. And suddenly I stopped, you hear me? And in the middle of that office building, do you hear this? I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw—the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can’t I say that, Willy?

—Arthur Miller
—from “Death of a Salesman” (1949)

palaver

Strong Arguments

palaver /puh-LAV-ər/. noun and verb. A conference, dispute or contest (originally, primarily West African). Tedious, time consuming or idle talk or other activity. Loud or confused talk. Flattery. From Portuguese palavra (talk), from Latin parabola (a parable, words, speech). See also: bunk, bunkum, hokum, cajolery, wheedling, jabbering.

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Links: Feb. 10, 2019

  1. In less than 12 minutes, A Sonic Conjuring explores how audio producers re-created the sound of the final moments of World War I—and the ensuing peace—using “using audio shadows captured on film.” And it is, as a friend said, astonishing.
  2. Typewriter Cartography‽ Yes, please.
  3. Each week in What’s the Difference?—Brett Warshaw’s newsletter “for the curious and confused”—a concise exploration and explication of a wide range of potentially confusing things such as “Jails and Prisons,” “Cement and Concrete,” and “Cremini, Button, and Portobello Mushrooms.”
  4. It’s easy to fall into (or hard against) the ongoing tech backlash. Not so fast… → My disabled son’s amazing gaming life in the World of Warcraft
  5. [Via Reader S.] comes this intriguing and creepy “fur mirror” (really a kind of fur display/monitor) by Daniel Rozin. ※ See also: Rozin’s similar piece that uses 450 rotating penguins in place of fur and more information about Rozin and this exhibition at the bitforms gallery.
  6. The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies features more than 700 images of art and office supplies and tools now forgotten (or nearly so).
  7. “The public service of black cops, for some, has become equal to aiding the enemy. That’s why Edwards took up a project he calls ‘Black Outlined Blue.’ He wants to tell the stories of black cops in the Atlanta Police Department who deal daily with the duality of life in their skin and life in their uniform.” → The Burden They Share
  8. Excellent longform journalism pieces this week, each of which is sad and bonkers in its own way. → “Down The Rabbit Hole I Go”: How A Young Woman Followed Two Hackers’ Lies To Her Death ※ A Suspense Novelist’s Trail of Deceptions
  9. I’m skeptical of the “Intellectual Dark Web” label, which seems like the kind of shorthand that logically eats itself, but I do think there’s something to embracing honest assessment of ideas and our relationship to them…as Meghan Daum does. → Nuance: a Love Story ※ See also: A conversation with Meghan Daum.
  10. Today in 1962, the Soviet Union exchanges pilot Gary Powers and student Frederic Pryor for Soviet KGB Colonel Vilyam “Willie” Fisher in Berlin. Powers’ U-2 spy plane had been shot down nearly two years earlier over Sverdlosk by the Soviet air force using a “Divina” surface-to-air missile, and Powers was serving a ten-year prison term. Fischer, convicted as part of the “Hollow Nikel” espionage case in New York City, was four years into his thirty-year sentence. Pryor—arrested in August, 1961, was, by all accounts, just a student in the wrong place at the wrong time, used as extra leverage to force the US into a trade. Powers, who initially faced a groundswell of criticism for both failing to engage the self-destruct explosives in his plane and not making use of his suicide pill (actually a coin with shellfish toxin embedded in its grooves), was later recognized for his service and bravery. In 1977 Powers was piloting a news helicopter when it ran out of fuel. Going down in a heavily populated area near Encino, California, Powers diverted his emergency descent to avoid a group of teens playing baseball, resulting in a crash that killed him and the cameraman just 50 yards from the baseball diamond. ※ See also: Gary Powers: The U-2 spy pilot the US did not love || Francis Gary Powers, Jr.’s “A Few Words of Defense” || Steven Spielberg’s dramatization, Bridge of Spies.
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