We Are Currently Experiencing Technical Difficulties

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Robert Musil in Vienna, undated photo

Hello readers and subscribers, and thank you for your support as always, whether economic, moral, or both. Just wanted to mention that if you’re wondering when the next post that starts out with a memoir of my discovery of the personal relevance of Robert Musil’s seminal interwar modernist masterpiece Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaften during an acid trip with a biker named Tiny at a Hell’s Angel’s chapter in Oakland in 1982, and ends with a discussion of date window colors, is going to be published, I’ve been down with some sort of bug for a few days. We hope to return soon to your regularly scheduled programming. In the meantime, some of my favorite stories from this week (“week” loosely defined):

• Velociphile’s intricately detailed look at the pros and cons of the new Excellence Chronometer standard –

• ScrewDownCrown on scarcity and desire (with an anecdote in the comments from yours truly on Frederick the Great’s bizarro-world coffee recipe) –

• David Ichim at SJX’s analysis of oscillator coupling modes in “resonance” watches, which proves that when I wrote, in a recent Recommended Reading, that “It doesn’t happen very often but every now and then you’re going to wish you’d paid more attention in calculus” when you read SJX technical stories, I did but speak the truth –

• A story I wrote in 2018 on a now-untended Squarespace blog about the most costly dye in the ancient world, and a theory of luxury –

• Last January’s headline of the month–

• From Scientific American: Genetic analysis of Neanderthal-human interbreeding shows that good girls really do like bad boys (maybe? from the story: “‘One can only speculate!’ Tischkoff says”)–

• Another story from my old Squarespace about that time I saw a ghost in my London hotel room (with a sidequest from my older son about not reading horror stories to your kids before they’re ready)–

• And finally, speaking of Zach, his latest from his Substack: a paper written in collaboration with ChatGPT which proposes that one possible solution to our in-crisis systems of governance, is to adopt a Bronze Age palace economy model with decentralized resource distribution controlled by AI.

Thank you for your patience as my immunoglobulins sort out this persistent but debilitating invader. By the way, now that Infinite Jest is a bit played out in terms of high-prestige performative public perusal, may I highly recommend Musil; Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaften makes Infinite Jest look like The Roly-Poly Puppy Meets Tom Hanks. Buy your copy today and flaunt it on the subway, the café, your flight to Watches & Wonders … I think it could be the next big thing 😃