The experience of reading poetry aloud when you don’t fully understand it is a curious and complicated one. It’s like suddenly discovering that you can play the organ. Rolling swells and peals of sound, powerful rhythms and rich harmonies are at your command; and as you utter them you begin to realise that the sound you’re releasing from the words as you speak is part of the reason they’re there. The sound is part of the meaning and that part only comes alive when you speak it. So at this stage it doesn’t matter that you don’t fully understand everything: you’re already far closer to the poem than someone who sits there in silence looking up meanings and references and making assiduous notes.

— The Sound and the Story: Exploring the World of Paradise Lost, Philip Pullman in The Public Domain Review

In a way, the mere existence of Balanced Rock also seems like a prank, either geological or cosmic. The enormous boulder looks like it had been photoshopped onto the landscape, or photographed mid-roll, or carefully placed by aliens. But it’s no hoax and there’s no sorcery to it. Rather it is a prime example of a whole category of geologic formations called ‘precariously balanced rocks’ -PBRs, for short. They’re exactly what you might expect. ‘It’s a rock balanced on top of another rock,’ says Mark Stirling, who studies PBRs at the University of Otago in New Zealand.

— Why Scientists Fall for Precariously Balanced Rocks in Atlas Obscura

Add to that the fading memory of the Cold War and fiercer competition among the great powers, and it’s no surprise that the guardrails on the world’s most destructive weapons are disappearing.

— A New Nuclear Era Is Coming, Uri Friedman in The Atlantic

The Cheese and the Worms (Italian: Il formaggio e i vermi) is a scholarly work by the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg. The book is a notable example of cultural history, the history of mentalities and microhistory. It is “probably the most popular and widely read work of microhistory”.

The study examines the unique religious beliefs and cosmology of Menocchio (1532–1599), also known as Domenico Scandella, who was an Italian miller from the village of Montereale, twenty-five kilometers north of Pordenone. He was from the peasant class and not a learned aristocrat or man of letters, Ginzburg places him in the tradition of popular culture and pre-Christian naturalistic peasant religions. His outspoken beliefs earned him the title of a heresiarch (heretic) during the Roman Inquisition.

— The Cheese and the Worms Wikipedia

In head injury, a coup injury occurs under the site of impact with an object, and a contrecoup injury occurs on the side opposite the area that was hit.

— Coup contrecoup injury Wikipedia

I’ve always just ploughed (or slogged) through particularly long and challenging books in one go, the same as I would for anything. I’d love to have a better “active reading” strategy though, and one that I actually stick to. “Steelmanning” an argument sounds like a great tool for that.

“Steelman” the argument, reworking it so that you find it as convincing and clear as you can possibly make it.

— A Note On Reading Difficult Books by Brad DeLong

I was a child, but adults should know better than to believe that other cultures speak in spells. The concept of “untranslatable words” preserves the idea that the world can never be fully mapped out and expunged of mystery. That’s a comforting thought. It keeps alive the possibility of escape—of something surviving far beyond our everyday experiences.

— Why We Love Untranslatable Words, David Shariatmadari in Lit Hub

One incident stands out in particular. We were about an hour into the lesson and had just graduated from the backroads of the student’s hometown to a two-lane street with steady traffic. The car in front of us had slowed down, signaled, pulled over toward the shoulder, and made a smooth right turn into a shopping complex. Bob was impressed. “See how nicely he positioned that car?” He explained to the girl that that was exactly how it was done. And then a while later, long after the moment had passed, he said quietly, more to himself than to either of us, “I really liked the way he did that.” It had the ring of nostalgia to it.

— Learning About Work Ethic From My High School Driving Instructor, James Somers in The Atlantic

VII. The right amount of technology is the minimum needed to solve the problem

— Calm Technology, Amber Case in Designing Calm Technology

While Bobby, the never-married protagonist of “Company,” would seem at first blush to have little in common with the divorcing Charlie in “Marriage Story,” Driver found both men had a stubborn unwillingness to really confront themselves. When “Marriage Story” begins, Charlie’s wife, Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) has moved on and is moving out, but it takes Charlie ages to realize that things will never go back to normal, and that he is now shouldering a significant loss.

“He can’t name the thing, he can’t express it,” Driver said. “Only through an abstract way can he process it and grieve.”

— Adam Driver Has Put Everything He’s Got On Screen, Kyle Buchanan in New York Times