Walking

Thank you, past and likely future Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, in particular for this Twitter post in memoriam for Dennis Yekimov, killed in action in Gaza. That big wide intelligent friendly face, and in the biographical notes:

He would hike dozens of kilometers in streams and in the hills of Jerusalem and the whole country.

Younger, betters versions of myself, that is how I see these heroic guys, who have so much to lose and are willing to lose it, and are doing so in the hundreds.

Craig Mod on walking as operating system. Love it.

Nice on Nietzsche. And nice that reviewer John Gray mentions La Gaya Scienza as one of his best books. Time for a reread.

Pleased to see that Petach Tikva intends to effectively expand Hayarkon Park eastwards.

The plan includes 1,250 dunams (312.5 acres) for parklands, 1,066 dunam (266.5 acres) extension of the national park, 107 dunams (26.75 acres for sport, 642 dunams (135.5 acres) for agriculture, and 639 dunams (159.75 acres) for housing and employment. The plan will be sent for approval by the Central Israel Planning & Building Committee.

In this fun review of the Succession episode “Lion in the Meadow” (though surely a better title would have been “King Kong Comes to Dance”), Andrew Gruttadaro quotes the episode’s closing line “a timely fucking Evian”. Having watched that scene a few times over last night, I thought, no, there is no adjective between “timely” and “Evian”. But rewatching the scene, I’m wrong ⁠— I didn’t even hear the fucking word, that’s how much we’ve debased it.

A timely Evian; like everything else in this episode, what a great line! And this review transcribes much of the juiciness. The author also has a short Twitter thread on one of its great set-pieces, Adrien Brody’s Josh Aaronson’s layers.

The Smithsonian posts a nice little piece on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Laurent House, designed for the wheelchair-bound client who clearly adored his wonderful home, which is now thankfully a museum.

This fellow Guy Stagg did what I failed to do in reverse: walked from Canterbury to Jerusalem.

AutoCar drives the electric Jaguar I-Pace from London to Frankfurt. As recently as two years ago such a journey simply wasn’t feasible. Now, once you have the more expensive car, it’s much cheaper than driving diesel let alone petrol. That said, charging stops are an hour rather than five minutes, and every 200 miles rather than say every 500. But I think there is some good here. Travellers must get out and stretch their legs for a longer while. All in all our automotive future looks improved.

The rather impressive gentleman Craig Mod chronicles a walk along a thousand-year old pilgrimage route in Wakayama prefecture, Japan.

Free-running amazingness may well become, like swimming, an increasingly common part of the human repertoire. Good monkey, good.

“You can’t cross the species barrier but, by bumping up against it, you can learn things.” In The New Yorker, Joshua Rothman surveys ventriloquism of the soul. “Tolstoy’s animals teach us to be good,” he explains. “Joyce’s teach us to be alive.” [via aldaily.com]

If you were troubled by the song persuading Ariel to remain under the sea, here’s why.

Stand up for your work! Or as The New York Times puts it, “Taking a Stand for Office Ergonomics”.

Exhaustive and wonderful list of what Alli Magidsohn expects to miss upon leaving Israel after 7 years, published by the impressive David Horowitz’s new The Times of Israel. (Not so sure about “the ferocity of celebration here” though, at least among the non-religious.)

Walking in America, or rather the lack thereof. A 4-part series in Slate, by Tom Vanderbilt (whom I met 1996). One thing to which he doesn’t correlate national walking statistics, and it seems to me the obvious thing, is the number of anti-depressants prescribed.

Hayarkon Park will spread into Bnei Brak. Good news.

Will Self walks the diameter of London [requires registration at the London Review of Books ⁠— do it, people!].

Arstechnica, the iOS 5 review. Featuring game-changers Siri and the iCloud.

My goodness: a long juicy New Yorker piece on David Grossman.