HeyJaredThe Mundane Exotic
Exploring the mundane and exotic aspects of travel through stories, essays, and curated lists of books, music, podcasts, and more.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
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- Sep 18, 2026
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On Art, Artifice, and Georges Perec’s “Species of Spaces” (opens the original)
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In a recent, excellent article in Aeon, Weird Studies host and writer distinguishes between Art and Artifice. Art, according to Martel, exists in the world of “things in the making;” artifice in the world of “things made.” The world of “things in the making” is “baffling creative;” the world of “things made” is mechanically causative. The baffling creativity of Art participates in “the living movement by which all things come to be as event
Ballpoint Pens Are Really Just Sunlight and Plankton (opens the original)
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Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of re-evaluating ideas. Updating your priors as the Bayesian boys say. One way to do that is to reconsider the ballpoint pen and the act of writing.Nearly everything from the ink to the tube to the barrel of that ballpoint pen is made from petroleum, and petroleum is made from ancient sunlight lodged inside the microscopic bodies of plankton buried in the lightless soil with their light-filled bodies for hundreds of millions of years. Then,
Controlled Hallucinations and the Precariously Assembled Self (opens the original)
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<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="971" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nFwv!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd46a7e8f-66de-47e9-ac86-4178d99ea23b_1920x1280.j
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