This week at work I had to reckon with not being as productive as I could have been. A bit embarrassing to take a look back at previous weeks, and see with 20-20 hindsight, so much under-used capacity. But as with many things in life, big dividends can come from renewing your focus, cleaning up bad habits, and taking on a little more than you think you can handle. Like I talk about with running a lot, I like checking in every now and then and see where my limits really are. An emotionally exhausting week but it also opened up a lot more. The ceiling is higher than it was a week ago.
Art
A Taino ceremonial seat (duho) or platter. "The large eyes, gaping mouth, and curled toes of this figure suggest a heightened state associated with the consumption of cohoba. This vegetal hallucinogen was used by Taino spiritual healers and leaders to communicate with supernatural forces. The figure lies on his back with fists clenched behind his head, and wears a woven skull cap and bands around his arms and legs. He is identified as a zemi, a deity or ancestral spirit that permeated the Greater Antilles."
Woman on Rose Divan, oil on canvas by Henri Matisse.
An Ethiopian fly whisk made of bone, dyed horsehair, and plant fiber.
Books
Middlemarch!
Articles & Episodes & Twoots
"If you’re roughly 70% happy with a piece of writing you’ve produced, you should publish it."
28 Films for the 28 Days of Black History Month. I watched a couple of the shorts, the Sesame Street "Cracks" short is really interesting and I liked the child detective story in The Case of the Elevator Duck, too. The Magnificent Major features a young Tisha Campbell
In How to Change the NYC Charter to Solve the Housing Emergency, Part 1 and Toward a Blogosphere That Can Draft Law, really appreciating Daniel Golliher's… I'm not sure how to describe it – entrepreneurial civics? There is a lot of progress lying around waiting to be picked up.
"Americans need to know that when the future comes, we’ll all get to go together."
"Informed rejection is a perfectly acceptable choice. But avoidance, especially with tech, is a default whose feasibility continues to shrink with every innovation."
"The winners will be those people who have exercised a whole bunch of curiosity." and "The future belongs to people whose work cannot be easily reduced to a dataset, and who can use AI to become even better at what they do."
What fully automated firms will look like.
"The time to snoop around for “waste” is when everything else is going so great you’re getting sort of bored."
Music
Daniel Trifonov, My American Story, with Philadelphia Orchestra. This album helped me have an A+ lovely morning commute.
Adam Rudolph, Archaisms I and Archaisms II. I remember a moment listening to this at work last week when I was growing more and more frantic and unfocused and it's because "Archaisms A2" was taking over my brain.
Caroline Shaw continues to be one of the most interesting composers. A few singles, choral works, presumably for an upcoming album:
Various, Seippelabel, Vol. 11. Lots of ambient space wash. I'll keep this around for a while.
The Orb, Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld.
Vijay Ayer, Compassion.
Movies
Carry-On. Great fun. Good to see a "regular guy" action movie. From the director who brought you other great regular-guy thrillers like The Shallows, Non-Stop and Run All Night. Reliable!
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1. Everything is grey! At least we get more color on the core friendships. Ron is exasperating, though. I like the "travel around the world to collect stuff" aspect (a core RPG element), and especially like the zombie/apocalypse movie vibe on the return to Godric's Hollow.
TV
The X-Files, s4e6 "Sanguinarium". Witchcraft and cosmetic surgery! This was fun, if gruesome.
Severance, s2e1. At long last, started the new season. Putting out this theory before I continue the season: Ms. Casey is in a coma or something – basically accidentally severed – and she can only wake up and function as a partial "innie" version, and MDR is helping with some sort of sketchy scifi brain repair work.