The mortifying ordeal of being known A Fragment by Tim Kreider opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com Years ago a friend of mine had a dream about a strange invention; a staircase you could descend deep underground, in which you heard recordings of all the things anyone had ever said about you, both good and bad. The catch was, you had to pass through all the worst things people had said before you could get to the highest compliments at the very bottom. There is no way I would ever make it more than two and a half steps down such a staircase, but I understand its terrible logic: if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known. lovehumanity
Sentences and words do not exist by themselves Sentences and words do not exist by themselves, but have natural, inevitable, unavoidable interactions with their surrounding spaces, words, and other sentences. Sentences are not independent of their spatial context, and interactions can create meanings and harms. Sentences survive content-indifferent and content-hostile spacings, but surviving is not thriving. Text space should not be owned and governed by generic productions grids, which make for convenient production but inconvenient meaning. Space can and should be content-responsive, actively contributing to meaning – forever practices in poetry, maps, math, computer code, comics, theater/movie scrips, posters. Subtle visual spacing differentiates and clarifies sentences, and meaning becomes more consequential, memorable, retrievable. Edward Tufte, Seeing With Fresh Eyes Concrete poetrygridless.design typography