The Curious Corner / Issue #8

Some weeks make you feel like everything is going wrong in the world. Salman Rushdie’s stabbing, news about climate change, ideological clashes and more. The big shocks hit you like waves. But they also remind you about the sanity that comes with doing the small things. Like writing this issue of the newsletter. So, write I will, and share some things that kept me going as I read them this week -

• Instagram users are always one algorithm change away from meltdown. From a app where your friends shared vacation photos to a platform where video reels rule, many feel Instagram has betrayed its core premise. I am one of those people. That is why I was very excited when I found about BeReal - an app that claimed to be the anti-Instagram. An app where people could put up real, unedited photos and be “real”. But it is weird and unsettling how even an app like this one has fed into our obsession with turning our lives into content. This was an interesting read about this phenomenon .

“BeReal, with its everyday, this-is-how-I-roll mechanism, only adds to this ostensibly more relaxed approach to posting. But, in actual fact, it’s only trapping us in an endless, 24-hour cycle – one in which every user knows that everyone else is carefully curating their casualness.”

• I‘m sure you’ve heard the words - the medium is the message. I read an excellent piece on how these words remain true today and today more than ever. The wisdom of Neil Postman’s words is stunning. You will find them in the linked piece. But what took me by surprise was the question - are we still not taking technology seriously enough? What exactly is it doing to our brains? I invite you to evaluate your relationship with technology and media. It’s a question worth answering for your own sake.

In his prophetic 1985 book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” Postman argued that the dystopia we must fear is not the totalitarianism of George Orwell’s “1984” but the narcotized somnolence of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” Television teaches us to expect that anything and everything should be entertaining. But not everything should be entertainment, and the expectation that it will be is a vast social and even ideological change.

• Do you remember the last time you discovered an author whose writing got you hooked? A particular phase follows where you want to read everything this author has written. And if you really like this author, you want to know the literary influences that shaped them. Luckily, there is a new genre of writing becoming popular - it’s called the bibiomemoir - where authors trace their journey through books. Yes, it is exactly as dlightful as you would imagine. Read more in this charming piece .

“Certain words are alive, active living,” the narrator says in Claire-Louise Bennett’s Checkout 19, “in fact it feels as if they are being written as you read them.” Published in 2021, Checkout 19 is a novel, but it also belongs to a strand of writing that has flourished over the past few years, sometimes known as “bibliomemoir”, in which authors chart their lives through books. It’s a piece of writing about adolescent reading that becomes a book about the role of reading in making a self and a life.

• When you feel you’re struggling, you often tell yourself that you’re doing your best. You’re striving to be better. It’s a noble aspiration - self-development, getting better everyday. But it’s not the best thing to do all the time. As more of us find ourselves stuck in the unending loop of self-development, the role of acceptance and definition of effort demands a fresh look. The words in this quietly assuring piece about personal philosophy really helped.

“Talk of doing our ‘best’ usually describes short term or one-dimensional exertion, whereas the work of moral self-development – like that of any close relationship – requires iterative learning, effort sustained and renewed over long periods of time, and forms of respect and equanimity that simply are not well described in terms of effort“

• Simple is so so effective. LOVE this ad for Timex - the thought, the insight, the copywriting- everything!

Some quotes to end this issue with -

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”

— Haruki Murakami

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”?

―?J.D. Salinger

“First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we've realized it's a brochure.”?

―?Douglas Adams

Thank you, dear reader, as this marks two months of this newsletter - something I could not imagine when I began writing. Thank you for reading. I will see you next week.

Stay safe, stay curious!