Soul Lovers

The Fateful Lovers’ Suicide

Mary Kay McBrayer | Messy Nessy | 23rd June 2022 | U

It has become customary to consider the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as the event that both sent Europe irrevocably towards war and fatally undermined the Habsburgs. But what if it was another death, 25 years earlier, that was to blame for both outcomes? The case is made here for the suicide of Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, in 1889 as the inciting incident of it all (1,717 words)

Your Fitbit Has Stolen Your Soul

Justin E. H. Smith | UnHerd | 29th June 2022 | U

Data collected by a fitness tracker — steps taken, calories consumed, hours slept — is "the kind of knowledge of who you are that can still be obtained even after you and your culture have given up on any conception of the true value of a human being". This bleak take on the demise of "soul activity" also posits that we are being nudged by our devices into a perpetual cycle of "like seeking" (1,926 words)