NYT: Decoding the Defiance of Henry VIII’s First Wife. Relevant to my interests. “By the end of the afternoon, Braganza thought she had figured it out in her notebook, via a trial-and-error process she compared to ‘early modern Wordle.’ The cipher, she concluded, spelled out HENRICVS REX — Henry the King — and KATHERINE — his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Nothing remarkable there, perhaps. But Braganza argues that the pendant was commissioned not by Henry but by Catherine during the period when he was trying to divorce her and marry Anne Boleyn, as a brazen assertion of her lifelong claim to be his one true wife and queen.”
The Economist: Ann Shulgin pioneered the use of psychedelics in therapy. “She started to be called a “pioneer” and people started to write papers on how psychedelics can increase ‘brain connectivity’ and ‘neuroplasticity’. But she would always put it more simply: they allowed you to love yourself.”
Ted Gioia: 10 Observations on Tragedy in a Digital Age. “Despite the hubris on daily display, almost every kind of negative social metric is on the rise—depression, suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, violence, etc. At some level this is connected to the psychic cost of living in a tragic age which refuses to confront tragedy.”
bookbear express: modern malaise. “People have become anti-work because work used to be a source of meaning and prosperity, and now it isn’t. But meaningful work is the one of the only sources of meaning along with family and religion. If we lose it, we only have nihilism.” And “We yearn for radicalism, for inventism. This is why the right is doing better politically than left, because they have the language of nationalism. The left is offering nothing except management and consolation. The left has failed by refusing to produce imaginative politicians who can tell a compelling story of who we are and where we’re going.”