Good afternoon once again lovely email friends, hope you’re well. Somehow, the door to my fridge became covered in magnets from various travels. Yesterday I happened to notice the most recent addition was not from some far-flung country but from the fantasy world of Miniatur Wunderland; Hamburg’s delightfully bonkers model railway.
I have eulogised tiny worlds before, so it may not surprise you that I was delighted to see this effort to preserve Hong Kong in miniature. I have enormous admiration for those who are built for such precise and detailed obsessions.
🪚 The Art of Traditional Japanese Wood Joinery: I’ve been getting to grips with a Japanese saw called a Kataba, which has a long bast-wrapped handle like a sword, and cuts on the pull-stroke. It works best using some sort of guide, which has made the whole process of making a cut more ritualised. In Japan, some extraordinarily detailed joineries are still in use after centuries, and they are a delight. They’re also far outside my own abilities.
😁 How to think about pleasure: Weirdly hard to define, much less to feel OK about it, pleasure is a tricky creature. Can philosophy help us lighten up?
🏘 Meet the people who collect modernist houses: Just as some wealthy people collect cars, others amass architecture purely for pleasure. They go for buildings from the classic period of modernism—1925 to 1960—and despite being a century old, the style’s pioneering houses still represent an archetype of civilised living.
🤫 The danger of silence: A short, powerful piece from the heart, about finding the courage to speak up against ignorance and injustice, by slam poet and teacher Clint Smith.
🚌 Kyiv’s Soviet Modernist Vehicle Graveyard: One of Kyiv’s most striking modern buildings has, in recent years, also become one of the city’s most problematic ruins. Autobus Park №7—once the pride of the Ukrainian transport industry—exists today as a decaying morgue for almost a thousand abandoned buses.
✊ Private gain must no longer be allowed to elbow out the public good: The logic of private interest—the notion that we should just ’let the market handle it’—has serious limitations. The pandemic has drawn the lack of social policy response into sharp relief.
💬 The Art of Persuasion Hasn’t Changed in 2,000 Years: Aristotle outlined a formula on how to become a master of persuasion. He believed the best way to transfer emotion from one person to another is through storytelling. The more personal your content is the more your audience will feel connected to you and your idea. To successfully sell your next idea, try using these five rhetorical devices he identified.
🛰 Amazon’s Constellation of 3,236 Satellites Has Astronomers Freaked Out: Amazon was approved to launch 3,326 satellites; roughly 600 more satellites than the total number currently in orbit. Astronomers are worried: the reflective micro satellites have been turning up in astronomical observations, appearing as bright streaks of light.