Links #135

Celine Nguyen on research as a leisure activity. I really liked this. Recommended!

Wesley Osam on worldbuilding in science fiction and fantasy. In particular this bit: “Most of us live in the long tail of historical significance. The books that speak most deeply to most people deal with problems of our magnitude and help us come to terms with our mundanity. Much of SFF assumes without thinking about it—and, in assuming, inadvertently argues—that the only people of significance or interest are the ones whose lives take place on the cosmological/world-historical scale of exhaustive worldbuilding. Part of becoming an adult is accepting that you’re really Toiletry Application Guy, and that being this kind of person is okay.” I wish there were more speculative fiction in this vein.

Henry Oliver on reading great literature and his upcoming book, The Reader’s Quest. “We should read these great works because they offer us pleasures and perspectives that are unavailable anywhere else. Because they can fundamentally change how we think and feel about ourselves and the world around us. Because they are pinnacles of human accomplishment.” This post sparked my interest in trying classic lit again. (With some success this time!)

Steven Johnson on how to read a novel, more specifically about Patrick Collison’s book list tweet and Middlemarch and Bleak House. Neither of which I’ve read. I hope to rectify this by the end of the year.

Nathaniel Roy on how he uses notebooks. A nice nerdy deep dive. Enjoyed this. I’m using my paper notebooks more now, after a hiatus of several years, and it’s tremendously satisfying.

Julian Gough on stanets and ploons. I have no idea if he’s right about any of this, but the ideas here — that most of the life in the universe may be inside the icy moons of planets that don’t orbit stars — are riveting. (As is his idea about the evolution of universes, which I’ve linked to before.) (And…apparently I’ve linked to his newsletter not once but four times already. I did not realize this.)

Simon Willison on running a link blog, to get a little meta for a moment. Several of these accord with my own unwritten rules for these link posts, particularly the one about always including the names of the people who created whatever it is I’m linking to. That one matters a lot to me.