Many people nowadays read what the algorithm suggests to them, but there is nothing like walking in a bookshop, browsing the shelves, and casually stumbling upon a niche book you never knew you needed, but which will change your life.
"What shall I do with all my books?"
- Read them, or if you cannot read them, at any rate handle them, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open where they will. Read on from the first sentence that arrests the eye. Then turn to another.
Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas. Set them back on their shelves with your own hands. Arrange them on your own plan, so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are.
If they cannot be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.
- Sir Winston Churchill.
Relief of a honeybee in the Tomb of Seti I (KV17), Valley of the Kings, c. 1290-1279 B.C.
#WorldBeeDay 🐝
According to Egyptian mythology, when the sun god Re wept, his tears became honey bees upon touching the ground. Thus, the bee was not merely an industrious creature but a sacred symbol of life and divine grace. In temple reliefs, such as those of King Seti I; bees appear as part of royal iconography, embodying Lower Egypt, industry, and the pharaoh’s duty to uphold Ma'at, the cosmic order.
The bee’s presence also served as a metaphor for the kingdom as a harmonious hive, thriving under the pharaoh’s guiding hand.
“Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.”
― Boris Pasternak
A close look at a page from William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1892), produced in the spirit of the Kelmscott Press tradition, where text and image are inseparable works of art. #WilliamMorris#SpecialCollections
I do *not* want an AI "summary" of an email, or a book, or a life. I do not want an AI summary of a winter sky, or my father's hands, or the hope in my child's eyes. I do not want an AI summary of the human heart, or the first little shiver of lust, or the long good work of love.