About Fragments in Time
About the author
Welcome to ‘Fragments in Time’!
I’m Aron Roberts. Here’s some of what I’ve been doing recently: working with and helping support small businesses and startup companies that are striving to make things better, in ways ranging from modest to potentially world-changing.
This is a place where I write about things that spark some of my other nerdy interests. Am hoping some may also resonate with your own curiosity, too!
About the blog
One of this blog’s primary areas of focus is on memory: its startling fragility, and its preservation. In part, through sharing and spotlighting lives and creations worth preserving. If only for a while longer until they – like us all – inevitably fade.
As Tamar Haspel wrote in a November 2022 Twitter thread memorializing her mother, Barbara Haspel, to her readers, what’s left over from our lives – and those of others we love and/or admire – is in large part just “our collective memory.” And maybe, too, some other threads and ripples of influence, far less discernible than direct memories, that change the course of events in others’ lives across one or more generations.
As a key part of that focus on human memory, this is at least as much a space for curation – finding, synthesizing and sharing thoughtful viewpoints, perceptions, and creations of others deserving of wider audiences – as it is for my own observations.
I’m also an inveterate editor, so I’ll often edit posts, even after publication, to improve clarity or add yet more material. Like a do-it-yourself homeowner constantly working on home improvement projects, some past posts might all of a sudden feature new wallpaper – and even new rooms!
So far, this blog’s posts have focused on history, literature, music, science, visual art, and similar topics, yet at times future posts may stray somewhat far afield. My goal is to keep this a space devoted to “topics of the heart,” separate from my day-to-day business writing and from the tumult of political and social controversy. (Although an occasional post, like The Last Love Poem and Juneteenth and Remembrance, may stray across such neat lines.) And to continue steadily posting, with intervals between posts typically from one to three months.
Even more blogs/newsletters to explore
See the Reads section of my profile for interesting blogs/newsletters by other writers on Substack you might enjoy.
There are also some particularly enthusiastic recommendations here. (Be sure to refresh that “Recommended by” page in your browser to see yet more, as Substack displays only a limited number of randomly-selected entries each time.)
Many of these writers, whether highly recommended here or otherwise, comment on political, social, cultural, religious, economic, and scientific issues where controversies exist. I don’t always agree with them – I even disagree much of the time with at least several – but they often make me think.
Here are some other recommended writers, also tackling that same broad set of issues, on platforms beyond Substack:
Newsletters from many members of the team who write for The Dispatch are very much worth reading.
So is Isaac Saul’s Tangle News. He’s a keen and fair summarizer of varying points of view on current issues and controversies.
Byrne Hobart, author of The Diff (representative issue here) and Capital Gains, is a thoughtful observer, particularly around economics and government.
David Chapman, author of Meaningness, primarily writes about finding meaning and purpose in life, but occasionally takes interesting veers into political and social realms.
Matt Levine’s Money Stuff column on Bloomberg (sign up here), regularly serves up hilarious and trenchant observations of the financial world.
Two more recommended blogs serve up highly personal observations:
Alan Albee’s Words to Live By … (delightfully eclectic)
Ryan Dueck’s Rumblings (Christian and ethical musings).
Beyond all these specific recommendations, there are also many newsletter discovery tools that can help you find yet more outstanding reads. Among these:
Matter is a free and astonishingly versatile “reader for today's internet.” For starters, it can help you discover stellar articles, newsletter posts, and more, including those recommended by other authors you respect. Other features include off-line reading, “advanced speech synthesis, smooth highlighting, quoteshots, and more.” (As they note, “Matter lets you do more with what you read.”)
You can use Matter with free(mium) apps for iOS devices. (An Android version is planned, as of this writing.) Get started here.Each morning, Jacob O'Bryant’s free service The Sample sends you one article from a random blog or newsletter that might match your interests. When you spot one you like, you can subscribe to the writer with one click. Sign up here.
About the banner image artist
The striking banner image on the Welcome page for this newsletter is one of a set of images collectively titled “Fragments of a Hologram Rose,” created by Vlad Lysenco, a UI Designer/Concept Artist in the Republic of Moldova. Here’s Vlad’s artist page on Behance and his Instagram page. (The images were inspired by William Gibson’s short story of that name.)
Vlad made this set of images available under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
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About this place
To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.
They encourage new writers. Even if you’re writing for yourself, your family, your close friends, your pets … much less a global audience, consider expressing yourself by starting a blog here; it’s free, and their tools are excellent.
(Or consider writing on one of the other good blogging platforms.)
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