if i were gonna run a slow read, it'd be for this
+ fly brain maps, capillary-ratchet-feeding birds, bone-collecting caterpillars, & taxes
if i magically had the kind of audience to justify running a slow read1 of a whole book, I’d be awfully tempted to run slow reads of:
Diamond Hill by Kit Fan (gangs, nuns, drug addicts, lots of grungy death and rebirth in a shanty town as Hong Kong handover approaches)
Open City by Teju Cole (traumatic disassociation hidden under the pretense of intellectualism, the deep injury of being severed from our context and past)
they’re both stories with interesting characters that are also dense with layer upon layer of literary allusions and symbolism of the wazoo, tons of reference and meaning to sift through, and beautifully written. it’d be a joy, really
but i’m not really motivated to actually go out there and try to drum up enough people2 or whatevs so maybe just read these on your own i guess
the phrasing of this article’s title - A 'roadmap' of the fruit fly brain - made me want to read about a fly whose nervous system was somehow also an MTA subway map.
which in turn reminded me of Git Hub by Robyn Speer, a 2013 MIT Mystery Hunt puzzle which consists of “a Git repository whose history graph is isomorphic to the MBTA subway map.”
(puzzles are art and anyone who disagrees can fuckin fight me (see also, the Orville is Star Trek))
anyways here are some other subway-themed puzzles and a virtual fly brain
new ‘bone collector’ caterpillar just dropped
it lives in a spider’s lair, hiding by wearing the shed skin of its spider host encrusted with other insect body part bits. “One of the most elaborate cases was adorned with a weevil head, an ant head, spider legs, bits of fly wing and pieces of beetle wing and abdomen.” (WaPo)
“If there’s a bit of dried ant brain left in an ant shell, they’ll eat that before they sew it onto their back” - Daniel Rubinoff
phalaropes feed by swimming in tight little circles like “a bunch of hungry aquatic gyroscopes” fast enough to create a vortex that sucks food from the depths up to the surface, and then they capillary ratchet that food up in through their long skinny beaks - “The phalarope captures its prey in a droplet, then transports it mouthwards by a series of tweezer-like beak motions.”
Humpback whales do something kinda similar with bubble-net feeding (during the half of each year in which they eat, that is) - they swim in spirals blowing bubbles to stun and trap fish and then coordinate swooping up to gulp 'em down
oh and ps phalaropes are polyandrous - the females mate with multiple males, pursuing and fighting over them and defending them, and then fly away leaving the males to incubate the eggs and raise the chicks (the universe cries out for someone to write a reverse harem / why choose phalarope shifter romance)
Matt Levine never disappoints. Is being murdered securities fraud?
“The theory is that [CEO] Thompson’s murder caused UnitedHealth to become more patient-friendly, which made it less profitable, but UnitedHealth didn’t immediately tell shareholders that, so the shareholders assumed it would continue to be patient-unfriendly and profitable.”
so yeah, some shareholders are suing UnitedHealthcare after the whole Luigi shooting their CEO thing, but the arguments are weird
also in this episode of money stuff, we’ve got TAX SNAILS - apparently much like with the tax sheep of New Jersey, in the UK you can get a tax exemption by doing agriculture in your empty office building - and setting up a box with two snails in it seems to count.
“I just like the idea of going to an accountant for a ruling on what is and is not reasonable tax practice and the accountant has a chart where like “raze the building and plant soybeans” is at the top and “pot of basil in a closet” is at the bottom and there’s a dividing line between “tax exempt” and “come on” somewhere toward the bottom, and “two snails in a box” is right exactly on the line; the tax status of two snails in a box is uncertain, but everything more agricultural than two snails in a box is fine and everything less agricultural is not. And you’re like “some lobsters in an aquarium?” and your accountant is like “hmm seems a bit more agricultural than two snails, wave it in” and you’re in the lobster business until you find a tenant.” - Matt Levine
see also California’s 2 cow tax loophole, (but pls note that sheep are inherently funnier than cows & snails are ofc inherently funnier than sheep, so there you go)
not sure where the threshold would be anyways. 3, maybe, if they were legit very committed? 20 if more noncommittal? who knows
I kinda think everyone should feel the freedom to host their own slow reads, however big or small. My book group is just a personal re-reading project that got out of hand! And if it can inspire more reading circles out there, I'd be delighted.
I read Open City when it first came out and really enjoyed it. I would be up for reading that in a slow read.