Independence is a hanging word. Underneath it is the Latin dependere, to hang from, the same root that gives us the pendant hanging from a neck, the pendulum hanging from its pivot, and everything pending, which hangs over you until it is decided. To be dependent is to hang from something. To be independent is, literally, not to hang. Two months ago I wrote an essay built on may, the softest verb in English, and a month after that one built on commit, the word that stops being a pun when you type it four hundred times. The calendar has handed me a third word, and a loud anniversary to say it on: the Declaration turns two hundred and fifty this year. So this is a special, not the July essay, which will come when July is over and can be told honestly, but a day trip into one word, taken from the middle of the month it belongs to.

Read the essay: https://papers.aesthetic.computer/aesthetic-july-4-26-essay.pdf

More readings + papers: https://papers.aesthetic.computer