Terrestrial photography was feeling a little dull, I’m into space pics now. (Brancusi is of course an exception, in everything he touched he channeled other worlds, continued study.) The heavenly bods are positively gravitational, it’s delicious to muse on such hunks. This class of image is close to what we see in digital art these days—infinite space, gradients, spheres. Yet digital images don’t often muster gravity and magnetism. In a way digital simulations have too much freedom, the constraints of physics generate power, learning from simplicity and scale.

Today I’m launching a Substack called The Pamplet. It’ll be a space for letters on art, mind, feels, tech takes, semi-ridiculous self-help, varieties of mystical experience, and whatever else strikes my enthusiasms.

Movable type debuted across Europe from ~1450 on, and in its wake a new form of cheap, mass-scale, short-form publication known loosely as pamphlets spread like wildfire. As we know, these innovations upset the information environment status quo, and it took a few centuries to jostle out a new balance of power. Our time has parallels, though perhaps we’re living it at 10-100x. We have type at the speed of light, with nigh-infinite recomposability—and the party’s just getting started.

Seems like a nice moment to get out on the dance floor. Browse and/or subscribe here. Hot topics for future pamplets: