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Softex, 2016
"I asked Mohammed if I could interview him. He refused and gave three reasons why: first, he didn’t like cameras (though I didn’t have one); second, 'I like to be mysterious;' and third, no one would listen if he told his story."
Myriam Gendron
For one tune she switched into a distorted electric guitar. “I used to be in a metal band,” she said. The audience laughed. “It’s true,” she said.
Eden or Atlantis?: A review of the Computer History Museum
“People who had software would come with a bag full of paper tapes and throw them into the audience to anybody who wanted them." A review of the Computer Museum.
Landscapes at Speed
“See?” Antonioni says, “I have hidden nothing from you.”
Essenschaden
On Bagels, Hegel, and Grief.
The Puppet Man
All this expertly gave a series of metamorphic impressions that the napkin was afraid, tortured, oceanic, calm, fleeing, and liberated.
Oscar Wilde Visits Vicksburg, Mississippi
OSCAR WILDE is to be in Memphis during the middle of June and will be in Vicksburg about the 1st of July, all things being even. He will lecture on the sunflower and the primitive cabbage.
Issue 5 Editor Diary: Skeuomorphic Boat Shoes
Selections from the editors' diaries. Consciousness is episodic. I can’t pretend to the clairvoyance of children.
Tomatoes in East Palestine
Correspondence from Rob Two-Hawks, an East Palestine resident writing to Julia Rock on the massive train derailment: "Yes, the fish, people and other things are very unhappy. Nevertheless, I'll find a way to grow some of the Finest Damn Tomatoes on Earth here."
Editors’ Letter 4: Kenneth Rexroth’s Tombstone
“Poignant means stabbing--we forget that these days”
The American Dream/Fear of Cars
In fact, what you really need is a minivan—one that will fit your four kids on a hot day while you drive in circles at the mall. But you can’t go in yet, only quiet children get to shop.
Christmas in Pariang
Correspondence on the civil war in South Sudan.
"Knowledge for knowledge’s sake is not a meaningful posture in a warzone."
Getting There: A Review of Michael Heizer’s City
I do not understand Dhruv, but I trust him completely. 
Notes from the Cave: No Exit
He seems rather meek for a contract murderer, but what do I know — he is the first one I’ve ever met.
Observations and Inferences Regarding the Curious Residents of Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Island of nerds and simps. I fear you will never break the cycles you came here to escape.
Attention: A Visual Essay
A visual essay on attention. "There is a certain kind of attention we offer to works of art. We need to be invited to turn that kind of attention on other sights. The object above is a tool for evoking this attention. It’s called a Claude Glass."
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Zeus in the Accusative. Jazz in Silhouette.
Selections from the editors' diaries.
"I'm flattered to be a destination from which my friends may post flirtations."
"Newspaper poetry is heavy on metonymy and avoids the passive voice."
Material Truth
The contemplation of Christ’s broken body and shed blood does draw us in towards ourselves, then, but not in Kantian contemplation of the moral law within.
Crossword: It’s Perfectly Unambiguous
A crossword by Nathaniel Sandalow Ash: "Subcontinental Sovereign." "Crepuscular Hamster Alternative." "Putz."
Animal Variations
Field Mouse at Bay Attribution: Zorba the Geek / Field mouse at bay / CC BY-SA 2.0
“Come into animal presence. / No man is so guileless as the serpent.” Denise Levertov - “Come into Animal Presence” (1961)
Museum in the Basement of the Swimming Pool
Beyond the entrance of the swimming pool and down the stairs we descended into the museum dedicated to the people of this valley.
The Brazilian pavilion at the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition
A photo album from the Brazilian Exhibition at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889.
Attention, 1948, Gelatin Silver Print
This kind of attention always invites fulfillment in further attention, further holding-open of space for its object.
From a Mouse’s Notebook
Selections from the editors' diaries.
The Union of Salt and Sand
The affliction took many forms: one man refused to sit down, afraid he’d shatter his buttocks; another tried to fling himself into a kiln, in hopes of being remade as a goblet.
From Bohemia to the Black Arts Movement (and Beyond)
The roots of the ’60s Black Arts Movement lie in the same period of urban transformation that encompassed urban renewal and the rise and fall of the earlier bohemia. Hundreds of thousands of Black migrants from the south arrived in several waves before and after World War II — and until 1948, racist restrictive housing covenants and other forms of discrimination kept them concentrated in a South Side “Black Belt” and a West Side ghetto where homes were subdivided and increasingly unlivable.
VR MLK
A review of Time Magazine and American Family Insurance's Martin Luther King virtual reality exhibit.
Questioning Cameron Knox Day: A Reader Response
If he is still searching he could consider if his two week flirtation with the Bride of Christ had more to do with certainty than he thought it might have. I will be praying for him.
The Plot to Destroy Mouse Magazine Revealed
In the age of “fifth generation warfare” operations, educating the Mouse constituency constitutes the best defense.
Notes from the Cave: Part 2
But now, in bed, it was too warm to assume the proper posture of grief.
Epstein Brain: an interview with Ashley Chupp
Trying to tackle something like ritual billionaire sex abuse through this tiny lens of liberal girl boss feminism... you can't do it.
Zosima
More of the silent apartment, the enormous window, the light that came and went. Sometimes at night I would cry and say simple phrases like “is this it? Is this what’s left?” Then I read something in the Brothers Karamazov.
Editors’ Letter
To us, it would be just as much of a shame if you spent your life siloed with comrades as if you gave up the commitments that made you want comradery so badly.
I Was An Internet Catholic
At a time when the older avant-gardes come across as tired, co-opted, and insufficient responses to contemporary crises, Weird Catholic Twitter feels like a true counter-culture.
Exam
If you’re so afraid of death, why do you take such bad care of your body?
Notes from the Cave
Notes from nine months in Moscow, teaching creative writing to people transitioning to life after prison, and people in a homeless shelter called Noah’s Home of Industriousness.
The Theme Restaurant At the End of History
Decadence looks around, sees nothing but rotten fruit, and gathers it in sticky armfuls to distill into liqueur. It does this in an informedly fatalist manner, taking pride in its self-awareness but without the hope that such insight will provide any way forward.
The Work of Tragedy in the Spirit of Music
Michael Jackson wasn’t just a musician, but a musical divinity. This is less charitable than it sounds.
Dadspotting and Its Discontents
Sad, young, online people talk about Marianne Williamson, about their parents, and about animals with the same pathos with which one mourns a lost childhood.