Zohar Jacobs
@zoharjacobs
Migrant Jewish intellectual. Writer, historian, mystic | Fiction in Sunday Morning Transport, Analog, Asimov's & Clarkesworld | Oxford, UK
Weather radar looks like it's caught measles. Needless to say, not a drop in Oxford.
"To wield the absolute highest level of kinetic force in NASA requires an operator who possesses an incredibly calm, mathematically precise cognitive baseline."
It's time to bring out the Big Ice. (Yes, I did subsequently fit some liquid into this glass.)
NASA certainly figures near the top of the list. The Apollo program is one of the few things in American history that makes me feel actively patriotic.
At Braziers Park in Oxfordshire. Possibly the platonic ideal of a writing retreat.
What Artemis II reminds me is how unbelievably difficult space travel still is – and how even the hardest of hard SF almost always fails to reflect this.
And here, we see the hand of the mysterious Jewish-Tolkienist worldwide cabal at work. harpercollins.co.uk/products/heb...
Not sure if vibes are London pub, French bistro or fairyland. (The Tap on the Line, Kew Gardens station)
Annie's Cafe, Laconia NH. Owner says he's thinking about redecorating, which I can understand, but it still would be a shame
Book post! Work by poet friends @kitfryatt.bsky.social and @pairedaeza.bsky.social
Braziers Park is such a lovely place to spend a weekend writing. Highly recommended. web.braziers.org.uk/winter-write...
First sighting of Schattenfroh in the wild - on the special order shelf at @londonreviewbookshop.co.uk. I snuck a quick look and I'm not sure I dare, honestly.
New to me: a woman working in/adjacent to Mission Control in 1961. I have a few guesses as to identity but only guesses. (Photo by Bill Taub, from "Photographing America's First Astronauts," shared by Gavin Price on X.)
Went up to Scotland by Caledonian Sleeper, which is ridiculously expensive but also irresistible if you're a train obsessive or, y'know, a romantic (a writer, in other words). Waking up somewhere completely different...
Back from one writing retreat, already pondering the next. Cannot say enough good things about Moniack Mhor. What a brilliant, kind, inspiring group of people, and can you imagine a better place to write?
Not to mention that some of us would go for Bernstein over Woodward...
Conference in Brussels – on the way back to the station spent a little time in @europeanbarguide.bsky.social's "best bar in Europe." Reading one of the best writers in Europe. Brilliant.
"To write is to aspire towards... the mystery of a clearing that is other than the self, the vast windowless sunlit room of living experience. To write is to participate in the struggle to efface oneself. The problem is that the self keeps getting in the way." – Simon Critchley, On Mysticism