FYI #95
‘The Luddite Renaissance is in full swing’, via Brian Merchant’s Blood in the Machine.
Everything you need to know about the Booker Prize 2025 shortlist
The Art of the Impersonal Essay, by Zadie Smith, via the New Yorker… ‘Consequently, the word “we” appears in my essays pretty frequently. This isn’t because I imagine I speak for many, or expect that my views might be applied to all, but because I’m looking for the sliver of ground where that “we” is applicable. Because once you find that sweet spot you can build upon it.’
Lola Giuffré at SMACH Biennale 2025, via Bondi Observer
Writer and activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been pardoned and freed from prison, via LitHub
Australia launches global declaration to protect aid workers, via the Minister for Foreign Affairs
BLUE, The TATTER Textile Library (h/t Samin Nosrat’s newsletter)
The Centre for California Literature, launching in 2026
Trump’s Far Right Allies in Germany: Is History Repeating Itself?, interesting conversation on the Rest is Politics, with Austrian social scientist Gerald Knaus
I came across the word ‘deimatic’ in a novel I was reading.. I had to look it up… Deimatic behaviour or startle display means any pattern of bluffing behaviour in an animal that lacks strong defences to scare off or momentarily distract a predator. (Wikipedia).
A delightfully quaint 19th-century cottage in the Normandy countryside, via House & Garden
Left-Handed Girl | Official Trailer | Netflix, (via Cup of Jo)
Brene Brown in conversation with Dan Harris
Reading recommendation: Arundhati Roy’s memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me.