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Monday, May 17, 2021

On Packing Up My Library, by Ilan Stavans, Los Angeles Review of Books

The Hebrew word “Genizah” — meaning “to hide or put away” — refers to a storage place in a synagogue or a cemetery where old Jewish books go to die. They might contain the name of God in any of its variations. In Judaism, names play a crucial role: they hold the secret to their owner’s identity. There is no higher secret than the divine name. Placing sacred books in the Genizah is a way to protect them from falling into the wrong hands. You could say that the Genizah is both a holy place and a dustbin. Whenever these storage places become full, someone in the community takes out the content and buries it. That way sacred books are safe forever.

What Stoic Philosophers Can Teach Us About Grief, by Nancy Sherman, Literary Hub

But just how radical are Stoic consolations on loss? If grief is to be outlawed, then indifferents do seem, after all, really matters of indifference. Preference is denuded of positive feeling, whether love of your family or joy and pride in your work. Conversely, dispreference is robbed of the pain that comes with loss. We go toward or avoid with detached selections. We select wisely, but at the cost of our humanity.

Appuccino, Please: How TikTok Is Permanently Changing Starbucks, by Katie Notopoulos, BuzzFeed

There was a time when the idea of a mere soy latte or mocha Frappuccino was the punchline of dad jokes, an eyeroll about people not drinking “real” coffee. That time is long past, and a set of factors all coming together at once has made incredibly complex orders at Starbucks the norm rather than the exception — sometimes to the chagrin of the workers.

Welcome to the age of the Appuccino.