“ And the scholars are so greedy after news (which is none of their business) that they neglect all for it, and it is become very rare for any of them to go directly to his chamber after prayers without first doing his suit at the coffee-house, which is a vast loss of time grown out of a pure novelty. For who can apply close to a subject with his head full of the din of a coffee-house?
— A late-17th-century critic of the coffeehouse, sounding exactly like a Twitter critic, in the unusually good history-repeating piece “The distractions of social media, 1673 style” (via nickdouglas)
(via nickdouglas)
