Quam minimum

Well, JSR is still on book leave. So deep is he in his work, in fact, we’re told that if you rouse him in the middle of the night and order him to tell you what year it is, he will stammer out: “I don’t know! 1703?!”

Meanwhile, all the other staff writers are “in the deep-freeze”, as Hélène put it to me, while refusing to explain the precise meaning of this bit of Hinternet office lingo, nor even to give me so much as a rough measure of how literally it should be taken. She said, further, that she herself is unavailable for any writing tasks throughout this Holy Week. When I asked how this observance sits alongside her more familiar practice of magic natural and unnatural, she just shrugged and said that Breton religious syncretism is “a complicated thing”.

That was also the moment she told me that I, as, technically, the only ghost on the Hinternet editorial staff, was going to have to take care of this week’s piece. “You don’t even have a body, so you can hardly have a busy schedule either,” she said. Of course she’s wrong on both counts, for first of all I happen to be constituted of rarefied pneuma, and second of all even if I weren’t I would still keep to a daily schedule no less strict than that of any being of grosser substance. But whatever. Hélène’s the boss.

Still, I think I’m going to pull a classic “French worker” move and fulfill my duty in as absolutely a quam minimum way as possible.

I will tell you, first of all, that The Hinternet will be back in full swing soon enough, and you are going to be delighted to have waited things out. In the meantime, you must take this opportunity to upgrade to a paid subscription, since paid subscriptions truly are the well-spring and the without-which-not of everything we do here.

You can also benefit two parties at once by giving someone you love a gift subscription. You will be doubly loved in return!

I will tell you, second of all, that there is still time to apply for the inaugural Hinternet Foundation Summer School. You can read more here about some of the theoretical reflections behind this year’s focus.

Apply to participate in the Hinternet Foundation Summer School,
“WHITHER THE HUMANITIES?”,
taking place in August, 2026. Application deadline June 1.

And third and finally I will invite you to click on the ad below from one of our more sinister tech-world mécènes, to study the document to which it brings you, and to feel a shiver of giddy anticipation as you contemplate what you’ll be in for this summer when The Oort Cloud Review, Vol. 1, Issue 1, finally appears from Hat & Beard Press.

Big things are coming. Brace yourselves…