#article snippet

[etawardana]

Some people have become invested in the idea that the price of feminist success is loneliness, that the modern, liberated woman can’t find a man, or at least can’t find one to play second fiddle to her. Or even if she does find a man who will put her career first, an alpha woman wouldn’t want to be with that kind of a beta male anyway.

- Helen Lewis, in Travis Kelce is Another Puzzle for Taylor Swift Fans to Crack (Nov 2023) at theatlantic.com

[start-with-words]

INTERLOCUTOR (noun) - a person who takes part in a dialogue or conversation.

Last week, we saw Socrates arguing with Thrasymachus about the nature of justice. It was not a particularly insightful discussion, because Thrasymachus is not a particularly insightful interlocutor. (In the dialogues, Socrates is at his best when his interlocutors are themselves excellent.) But this week, we hear from Glaucon (and to a lesser extent his brother Adeimantus).

Source: https://jaredhenderson.substack.com/p/we-are-the-founders-of-a-city-platos.

[puckpocketed]

12/04/2025 - BU Terriers vs WMU Broncos

Captain Shane Lachance comforts teammate & fellow Devils prospect Mikhail Yegorov in the wake of their loss to the Broncos in the 2025 Frozen Four Championship match.

Moving to a new city to play for an entirely new team while beginning studies at a high-level university levies obvious challenges. But Yegorov gives all the credit to his teammates. In his first team dinner, Yegorov didn’t know anyone. Then, co-captain Shane Lachance asked the new guy to sit next to him at the table.  “They treat me as I was part of their team for four years,” Yegorov said. “I was a little surprised with that, because I’m like weird Russian just came here and but now they treat me like I’m actually their good friend.” [...] “Goaltending is all about love,” Yegorov said. “It’s just one word that kind of gets everything together.”

[osteochondraldefect]

haza fia

[yuzukimist]

I feel like more people should be talking about utility companies implementing repeated and exorbitant price hikes for the sake of increasing shareholder profits

[crescendo-if]

[valewritessss]

I felt so seen when I first read pjo and it mentioned Annabeth’s arachnophobia. I used to have so many nightmares when I was younger (probably started when I was around five or six), I would wake up in the middle of the night and be so terrified of moving because I thought there were spiders all over my bed. The shadows on my popcorn ceiling looked like spider figures and I remember just laying there sweating and not making a sound because I thought it would attract the spiders I guess? It was routine for me to shout for my mom—poor her, she would be woken at 2 in the morning like thrice a week— and she’d always shake my sheets and lay with me until I feel asleep. She would also take me to sleep with her and my dad in their massive bed (who was I to say no to the invitation?) and it got to the point where I was embarrassed that I couldn’t sleep a whole night without someone. Occasionally, I still have these nightmares about spiders and I just turn on a light, go to the bathroom, come back, and pretend it never happened.

Idk, just thinking about that. I kind of had forgotten about those nightmares but I don’t play when I see spiders because I know it means I’m going to dream about them.

[muzaktomyears]

John Lennon by his friends and son: ‘He got eight years more than Jesus’

The former Beatle would have been turning 84 this autumn. Now his son Sean and those who knew him best are keeping his spirit alive with the rerelease of his classic solo album Mind Games

Everyone wonders what John Lennon could have become. When he was murdered in New York on December 8, 1980, the 40-year-old was in his post-Beatles prime. The superb album Double Fantasy had just come out and he was plotting a world tour. His second son, Sean, whom he took time off to bring up with his wife, Yoko Ono, was five, and Lennon was feeling inspired. Seven solo records since the Beatles had split ten years earlier; a reconciliation with Paul McCartney.

“Everyone gets the time they get, and he got eight years longer than Jesus,” says Bob Gruen, the rock’n’roll legend who took photographs of everyone who mattered in the 1970s. He captured Lennon and Ono’s time in New York and is confident and chatty — until conversation turns to what Mark Chapman took outside the Dakota that day.

“John should be alive now,” Gruen says, clearly still affected 44 years on. Gruen had spent the weekend with Lennon before he died and was developing his photos when he got the call. “He didn’t die in an accident or of a disease. His death broke my trust in everything. He was grounded at the time. He learnt a lot from raising his son, about enjoying his life and being sober. Then I heard he was dead.”

Lennon would have been 84 in October — and at least we are left with his songs. But legacy is complicated. Over the years McCartney has stolen his crown as chief creative in the Beatles. Partly because Lennon is no longer here to speak. Also because, during Peter Jackson’s 2021 film, Get Back, Lennon was largely stoned, while the charismatic McCartney conjured up magic. So to redress the balance, this month’s innovative rerelease of Lennon’s Mind Games (1973) pushes design and immersion in ways few box sets have before. It features new mixes — some that amplify Lennon’s voice, others that emphasise the instruments.

It is the work of Sean, 48, who has been at the forefront of the Mind Games rerelease. Lennon’s younger son is a musician and artist based in New York near his mother, 91. “The title track is one of the most beautiful songs ever written,” he says.

The songs answer questions Sean never got to ask his father. Despite being very young when his father was around, Sean does have memories of him — talking, watching TV, playing guitar and saying, “Good night, Sean.” The song Aisumasen (I’m Sorry) on the record is an apology from Lennon to Ono.

“One thing that distinguishes my dad’s solo career,” Sean says, “is how personal his lyrics became. It is like a diary, and it is my duty to bring attention to my father’s music. Not just my duty to him, but a duty to the world. With the world as it is now, people have forgotten so many things that I never imagined could be forgotten. I refuse to let that happen to this music — it means too much to me.”

Two years before Mind Games came out, Lennon moved to New York and met Gruen. Living in New York was simpler for him and Ono. They were hounded in Britain. “One paper called Yoko ugly,” Gruen recalls. “But in New York they were just treated as the quirky artists who came to town.”

Gruen’s eyes light up. “He was just funnier than everyone else,” he says. “I’d have loved him on Twitter, he was so cool with one-liners.” He smiles. “And, also, he learnt to cook. I’d always try to go to the Dakota for mealtimes.” What sort of food? “John used to be a meat and potatoes guy, but he met [the actress] Gloria Swanson in the vegetable store and she gave him a book that acted as a way into a macrobiotic diet from a western one. He got really into healthy food, baking vegetables and steaming fish.”

And this is the frustration. In the late 1970s Lennon was cleaning up his act. For himself, for Sean — a son he was involved with, as opposed to his first child, Julian. He had changed, from the man who went on his fabled “Lost Weekend” in Los Angeles in 1973. The weekend actually ran for months, during which Lennon left Ono, on Ono’s suggestion, for their assistant, May Pang, then 23. After Lennon went back to Ono, Pang carried on in the music business and married the producer Tony Visconti, but the Lost Weekend era remains her headline. During that time Lennon enjoyed chaotic recording sessions with Phil Spector. “I wondered if he’d ever make it back to New York,” Gruen says. “I thought he might get a place in Hawaii, or just die.” But Lennon returned in 1974, for his final six years.

What does Gruen think about how Lennon is remembered? Especially in Get Back? “Well, who’s the last one standing?” Gruen scoffs. “Who gets to write the history? The survivors get to write the history. That’s the way it goes.”

Tony King was the vice-president of Apple Records at the time of Lennon’s Lost Weekend. “We’re here to talk about my friend,” he tells me sweetly. King was out in Los Angeles working on a Ringo album when Pang phoned to say that Lennon needed help with his Mind Games record.

“I wasn’t looking forward to it,” King admits. “John could be sharp-tongued. But, in LA, he was super-friendly. I was straightforward. I told him he had to repair his reputation. After Imagine [1971] he’d gone in a different direction, making songs with a political edge. It was quite easy for John to get caught up in things. He had this tendency to see someone, decide he loved them and then go in their direction. I was lucky he went in my direction for a while. He realised he had lost some fans. Mind Games was more what people wanted.” Its songs were simpler and less political.

Personally, however, Lennon was in turmoil. “May on one arm, Yoko on the other!” King says. “He was juggling a lot.” Did Lennon talk about McCartney? “They were not getting along, but he was still fond of him,” King recalls. And what about that Lost Weekend era? “He was off the walls, to be honest.

“We went to Las Vegas and John interrupted Frankie Valli during a show, saying, ‘Get your cock out!’ We got thrown out and on the way back to the hotel he was pissing up against trees and then throwing his chips around the lobby. I put him to bed. It was difficult when he drank. John had taken way too much acid and so when he drank it flipped him into another style of person. One day it was great, the next it was very hard.”

King remembers the night his friend died clearly. “I was out at dinner in LA and the waiter said, ‘He’s dead.’ I returned to a very lonely, sad hotel room.” Does he ever think about what Lennon might have achieved later in his life? “Elton and I talk about John,” King says. He means Elton John. “We say, ‘I wonder what he’d be up to?’ Well, he’d have pounced on the internet and got into AI. And he’d still campaign. I could see him hopping on a plane to see Zelensky. He was a busy person, with an arresting personality. You’re never going to forget him.”

The Mind Games reissue is a beast, a lavish celebration of a fine, melodic rush of songs. Bonuses include the Ultimate Mixes, which bring Lennon’s voice to the fore; Raw Studio Mixes; there is a Super Deluxe Edition “presented in a 13in cube”; puzzles; and even an experience on the free Lumenate app that is described as a “consciousness-expanding psychedelic meditation” and uses the phone’s torch and Lennon’s tunes to guide users into “a state of consciousness between deep meditation and psychedelics”.

We are a long way from 1973 — when the session musicians David Spinozza, on guitar, and Ken Ascher, on keyboards, were asked to play on Mind Games. They recall the recording as efficient — Lennon left his partying for later. He was in a creative peak, with Mind Games his fourth album in three years since the Beatles.

“He was a Beatle!” Ascher says. “I was thrilled to get the call. Yoko told me, around 10pm, that John would like to meet. I called my wife and said, ‘I’m not coming home — I’m meeting John.’ He played me music he liked, and we talked for hours. His humour helped me relax.”

Spinozza worked with Lennon and McCartney in the 1970s. How did the men compare? “Paul would do one song for six hours, even for a day,” he says. “With John we never worked on one song for six hours. He worked quick — he was all business. I’m not saying one was better than the other, but Paul could work on a drum sound for hours. John just wanted to get it done.”

How does Sean feel about his parents, looking back? “Their story is a love story,” he says. “They found each other across a great divide and certainly struggled through ups and downs, but never doubted their love. It is important we remember them as an example. Even through rough patches you can see my father thought about my mother. They were simply, irrevocably intertwined.”

Lovely words — and as for John Lennon himself? “Generally it’s whatever comes out, like diarrhoea,” he once said of his recordings. “A bit personal, a bit political — someone told me Mind Games was Imagine with balls, which I liked. It was like an interim record between being a manic political lunatic back to a musician again.”

Speaking in the early 1970s, after a decade of super-fame, he said he did not feel different to how he had before. “I’m still a bit adolescent,” he said in one of his final interviews. “My old friends from Liverpool got jobs after school. I’d see them six months later and their hair would be thin and they’d be getting fat. They were becoming old men — while I just keep going.”

(source)

[midnight-blues07]

The lore of sugar

© midnight-blues09

So I told a friend how good honey on toast tasted and he was telling me how sugar is cheaper than honey so that's more feasible and this made me appreciate living in a day where sugar is cheap.

If I remember correctly (yes remember, I'm not googling sources, it's not a research paper, it's a damn Tumblr post, my credibility lies only in reading some book i found in the library ) sugar used to be something that only the nobility could afford during the Italian Renaissance, not even every noble family just the ones high in the hierarchy. Candy, was like the caviar back then. And sugar used to be used more like a spice than a sweetner, honey was more accessible. I think it was middle East that gave the sugar imports. Venice was one of the major port towns and entrepreneurial centres, all sorts of goods and merchants, makes sense.

Again the lore of sugar, in war time japan sugar was scarce, previously the sugar was imported from Taiwan, and other countries of south east asia (googled info the names of the countries, hopefully correct)

Anyways, caramels and other fancy sweets that a lot of people had the privilege to enjoy before the lives of common man had gotten impacted with war, aka missile rains, harbour attacks, and we all know the atom bomb. Sugar was a luxury. That's why the can of sugar lozenges were so significant in the 'grave of flower flies' (I cried my arse off) it was a treat, sugar diluted with water, sweet water, was akin to celebration at the dire times. It was sold on black market on sky high prices.

Not only japan, world wide sugar imports networks were disturbed,but I'm not aware of the details, here's an article from a government portal linked (here)

All in all, sugar was a luxury, even if now it's a mass produced plague, so I'll enjoy half a spoon of extra sugar in my chai this morning thinking about all the times sweet tea was a symbol of nobility or a war time fantasy.

[etawardana]

Reading is an exercise in attention, and attention is increasingly fragmented.

Doug Lemov, as quoted in https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/how-to-build-students-reading-stamina/2024/01.

[start-with-words]

IMMUTABLE (adjective) - unchanging over time or unable to be changed.

My avid reader identity, previously as immutable as the fact that I have blue eyes and hate coriander, had been eroded over time until there was nothing left but the perfunctory paragraph or two I managed before bed. It wounds me to admit, but both I and so many formerly bibliophile friends are the 35 per cent defined by the “Reading State of the Nation” report as “adults who used to read but have now stopped”. And I put the blame squarely on technology.

Source: https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/books/features/reading-books-adults-novels-children-b2585606.html

[wraithsoutlaws]

i need to make a proper media for rattus rattus au ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

[skitskatdacat63]

What is this love triangle 😵‍💫😵‍💫

[mummer]

i was like “why does my asteroid city essay get a bunch of views from google (not like an insane amount but fairly steady) And i just found out. That somehow it is the top result. For if you google. “Asteroid City explained”

[scuderia-hamilton]

found another amazing article :))

i thought that i'll post my favourite snippets too, hehe.

SHE WENT THERE

iconic if u ask me

this paragraph truly ended them all

preach sister

"a hilariously unbearable short king" is one way to describe him 💀

ended him and the FIA and the sport. case closed.

[againstme]

please laura please i’m foaming at the mouth im begging on my hands and knees i’m setting up an altar please do some against me or against me adjacent project please god