Started reading Entangled Life. Just a few pages in and I was dumbfounded by how almost ubiquitous and even supernatural fungi is, and how we barely even scratch the surface even with what we learn about them in school, and with our fascination with horror content about fungi like the cordyceps or something. Like for example, fungi served as roots before plants had them, they make microclimates, they have high metabolic ability, in which the book also described as something akin to alchemy… The ability to turn the raw environmental ingredients into a variety of substances, and structures with unique properties. And that’s just in the few pages of the first chapter!

Also, when I started getting into reading this year I got interested in the classics, and had a good time with reading Don Quixote. Interestingly enough, the part with Marcella almost seemed like it criticized incel culture. Also to those who say that brainrot culture is a recent thing and that the past was better, read Don Quixote as it portrays a phenomenon of brainrot except with chivalric romances, which was the pop culture of the day. I also recently read Teleny: The Reverse of the Medal and Manon Lescaut. Damn Des Grieux, you were born for tragedy… Also, I’ve read the Picture of Dorian Gray, Carmilla, and Venus in Furs. You may see where I’ve been going if you’re familiar with these titles, and it’s all about love and passion and, well, a dash of homoerotism. Just in time for Pride Month. I honestly wanted to see how love and desire, such messy feelings, was felt by people who we were less likely to relate to, even idolized in our flawed perception of their orderliness, and whose lives were struck, smitten by it. The twitter post about Rennaissance teenagers comes to mind. What was their lives like, outside of cultural survivorship bias. I might even read On Love after reading Entangled Life if I have the time (unfortunately I have to deal with summer class, so I’m reading as much as I can before my time and energy gets sucked into it).