What do Norman Mailer and Charles Dickens have in common? – Crimereads.
The Nogood Book – Fonts in Use.
Vintage Egyptian cigarette packages – The Daily Heller.
radar
Bryan Johnson on eliminating death in an interview for the Interesting Times podcast. The irony is that it is so obviously a terrible way to live. But Ross Douthat really is an exceptional interviewer.
Shelfies #100: Jared Shurin – The sight of Jared's identical and perfectly shelved journals brings me so much inner peace and seething jealousy.
Random thought: The whole simulation theory thing that seems to be increasingly trendy these days actually isn't at all at odds with any of the traditional religious beliefs of old, the ones that imagined god as an anthropomorphized king on a throne in the clouds. Because simulation theory by definition implies the entire universe being created by someone somewhere. The anthropomorphized king in this case being a computer programmer. The throne: an ergonomic chair. Which, if you think about it, just so happens to be this decade's flavor of king.
Fantastic documentary on Enki Bilal from Standart.
Finally got around to reading Ahmed Khaled Tawfik's 2008 novel UTOPIA (in its original Arabic), which is just brilliant and in 2026 eerily close to reality.
Started watching SILO which I am enjoying enough, though I can't stand Rebecca Ferguson.
— Occult rituals in the Epstein files.
— “Just hang in there.” – Suzanne Vega for The Creative Independent.
— “An indie horror with internet origins has beaten the legacy franchise “Star Wars” at the box office this weekend.” – NBC news on the unexpected success of BACKROOMS and OBSESSION.
Migraine day today; No productivity for me.
Whichbook: Rather than browse books by genre or author, browse books by mood.
How a Houston company got its art on the walls of stoners across America: “Founded in 1969, Houston Blacklight & Poster Company was once one of the biggest distributors of the bright, colorful posters that adorned dorm rooms, basements and garage hangouts and became synonymous, along with lava lamps and bongs, with hippies and the counterculture movement.” — This poster here, by George Goode, is one of my favorite samples included in the article:
“[Lithium ion batteries are] the story of oil in the 21st century.” — Vital conversation between Nicolas Niarcohos and Novara Media's Aaron Bastani.
Also, an illuminating conversation on China between Jostein Hauge and Michael Walker.
Humbled to see that THE SOLAR GRID has been getting a fair degree of scholarly interest in recent years. These two popped up on my radar:
Contingent Futures and the Time of Crisis: Ganzeer's Transmedial Narrative Art — by Dominic Davies for Literary Geographies, 2022
Climate Change and the Future of the City: Arabic science fiction as climate fiction in Egypt and Iraq — by Teresa Pepe for Fragile Ecologies: Environmental Urgency in the Arts and Literatures of the Middle East, 2023
INSURGENT THOUGHT: Downloadable library of digital books on philosophy, “anarchist shit”, mysticism, and more. Instant download for me despite my allergy to extensive screen-reading. Via Warren Ellis' latest ORBITAL OPERATIONS.
Also via Orbital Operations: THE NIGHTLY RADIO.
Also, also: L'IL FACTORY BOOKS!
PAPER BULLETS: 110 Years of Political Stickers from Around the World by Catherine Tedford, dropping December 2026 from PM Press.
The Bird by Ahmed Naji.
One of the highlights of the Manshur event I participated in a few days ago was the discovery of Zeina Maasari's stellar research project: Decolonizing the Page, which includes a superbly curated archive of gorgeously illustrated and/or designed Arabic books from the 1950s to 1980s, many of which I had never seen or even heard of before.
“The gates at 168 Isabella Avenue opened to a $13 million estate she’d bought in 2000, a figure she mentioned twice before we even parked. What she didn’t mention was the $5 million loan she’d taken after the tech crash or the $60,000 a month it cost just to keep the lights on. Like much in Roomy’s world, it was all show, punctuated by name drops about neighbors like Larry Ellison and Yahoo’s Carol Bartz. Inside, Roomy introduced me to her husband, Sakhawat. Far from the “deadbeat” she’d described, he was educated, seemingly successful, and attentive to their adopted daughter, though far less kind to the maid, Vilma, whose breaks he monitored with unsettling precision. I’d later learn she worked nearly ninety hours a week for $250 and would eventually sue them. The house was dotted with carefully arranged silk scarves and designer handbags, a curated display meant to signal wealth. I’ve learned that people who try that hard to show you how rich they are usually aren’t.”
From WIRED ON WALL STREET via CrimeReads.