2024, Week 20

~ Mark

A few years ago when I lived in Santa Monica, I walked every street in city limits. And I did the same in downtown Atlanta a couple years before that (along with other silly walks).

After my run yesterday, I’m getting close to filling in the map of my neighborhood here in Crown Heights, Brooklyn – only 9 or 10 miles left! 🔜 There is nothing like knowing every inch of where you live. Can’t recommend highly enough.

School
The last two courses were the most tedious I’ll come across. Definitively in the homestretch now.

Running
This week I focused on working through fatigue. So: a couple short runs with weights beforehand, and ending my longer chill runs at a faster tempo. It’s been fun to practice like this for a little while. To feel that extra bit of tired resistance, and insist on pushing through it. Cultivates an interesting focus, and I suppose it’s good to annoy myself with slightly-higher expectations every now and then.

Books
I just started Medieval Horizons: Why the Middle Ages Matter, and it’s already rewiring my brain a little bit. It starts with an important corrective: our tendency to see “progress” through a mostly technological lens tends to exclude as much as it highlights. The flourishing of the Renaissance, Enlightenment, etc. was percolating long before.

Music
Big nostalgic highlight this week was seeing a twitter convo that reminded me of the “Birdman” track from Pilotwings 64. One of my favorite videogame tunes of all time. and then saw a message from the composer Dan Hess. He’s got a fun “Birdman” remake on his own channel.

This was very much a week of re-visiting classics. One interesting thing I seeing the disparity between hits and long tail. Not everything you do will be celebrated. Happens to the best of’em.

Aretha

Diana

James Ingram, It’s Your Night. “Yah Mo B There” is great – see also the music video with Michael McDonald.

Fatback Band. Is This The Future?. Funky! I like the title track and Sunshine Lady.

Quick hits…

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
“I will give you my three real keys to life. No jokes in this part, okay? They are number one. Bust your ass. Number two. Pay attention. Number three. Fall in love.”

“In 1985, I asked my brother David (age 15) to be the rotoscope model for my new game, Prince of Persia.” Very cool to see that old VHS footage. (I loved the way that game looked – there was nothing like it – but man, it was infuriating to play!)

Generative AI Is Totally Shameless. I Want to Be It. There is a humorous/lightly cynical tone here, but I think there’s an interesting silver lining: it’s pretty much always willing to try. No small thing!

No Web Without Women.

“The same thing happened in the United States, though not to quite the same extent. In 1980, there were around 28,000 drunk driving deaths there, while in 2020, there were 11,654. Despite this progress, drunk driving remains a substantial public threat, comparable in scale to homicide (of which in 2020 there were 594 in Britain and 21,570 in America).”

Movies
Taken 2. Does what it says on the tin! My previous review holds up.

TV
X-Files, s2e12, “Aubrey“. I haven’t seen many unrepentantly ugly characters in this series, so the ex-con in this one was a bit jarring. One of the more down-to-earth episodes?

Shōgun, s1e10. Great show. I have my quibbles here and there, but really happy I put the time into it. I hear they’re already signing people to come back for second and third seasons. I think I got enough out of this one that I’m not sure I need more, but maybe I’ll be swayed.