A week of winding down, shifting focus, senioritis gradually reaching a crescendo.
Art
Wake, oil on canvas by Lee Mullican. Ancient Flutes, turned bowl in cocobolo wood by William Hunter. Nature Sets Her Hound Youth after the Stag (from The Hunt of the Frail Stag), Netherlandish tapestry in wool and silk. Expo Mouth #10, oil on canvas by Tom Wesselmann.
Books
Mistborn. DNF.
Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future. This has been my morning subway read (daydreaming about east coast HSR).
Crossroads of Twilight. Chipping away at the WOT series until I find my next novel. Seems like consensus ranks this as the worst of the franchise.
Running
Kept my mileage in check, short and steady except for a very fun weekend loop. Looking forward to a couple weeks off.
Around the Web
Will it internet? Spencer Chang time-travels with a watch.
“Subway Builder is a hyperrealistic transit simulation game. Build a new subway system from the ground up while dealing with real-world constraints and costs.” Made by @Colin_d_m.
Why Are So Many Pedestrians Killed by Cars in the US?
What happens to college towns after peak 18-year-old? “By 2030, 20.7% of Americans will be 65 or older, while just 20.2% will be under 18.”
“Even when telling the history of a country, Shakespeare’s worlds are small; Melville’s, despite being substantially hemmed to a boat, is somehow large. Maybe Shakespeare in some way captured all there was to be captured at the time; if so, in Melville we can see how much larger humanity has become: industry, trade networks, energy, science, anthropology, firms with multinational labour, knowable continents beyond great seas.”
Daniel-isms: 50 Ideas for Life I Repeatedly Share, Part 1 and Part 2.
“One thing that I always have, especially if you go to a big concert hall, is that I very frequently want to turn up the volume.”
Russell Crowe on maps. Stars! They’re just like us! (Thanks, Jara)
Music
Myrkur, Spine. Scandinavian folk + metal.
Klaus Schulze, Deus Arrakis. Been killing it for decades. I should spend more time with his work.
Fusilier, Ambush. I didn’t end up loving the rest of the album as much, but I audibly said “wow” on my walk to work when I first heard one of the transitions in “LLC“. I love how adventurous the album feels.
DjRUM, Under Tangled Silence.
Various, Tron OST and Nine Inch Nails, Tron: Ares OST. Fun compare/contrast – the electronic+orchestra hybrid in the first, with some pop mixed in, and then the more stark band/studio sound in the most recent.
The Consolers, Jesus Brought Joy. Gospel duets. You can’t not smile.
Movies
The Silence of the Lambs. Still great! Would love to see it in theaters someday. When the lights go off and the night vision clicks on…
Manhunter. Still great! On this watch, struck my how quiet and thoughtful so much of the runtime is. Newly appreciated the climax, with our hero fully inhabiting the villain’s mindset and behavior, creeping through the moonlit forest to approach the house.
Tron. The cutting-edge visuals of the time are so different in style, and relatively crude compared to what we can do today, that they circle back around to become foreign and strange and wondrous again. Love that the in-computer world also had a bit of silent film look. Beautifully lived-in live-action interiors, too.
TV
The X-Files, s5e1–2 “Redux I & II“. We’re back! Tough watch in the first , so much talk talk talk talk talk talk. Things picked up in the second one. Mulder is getting so affectionate! I’m ready for Scully to get out of bed, and for both of them to get back to weird middle-America spooky investigations. This main government conspiracy arc is never going to go anywhere! Remember who your friends are.
Hannibal, s1e1. Revisiting this for a third perspective on the Hannibalverse. I think Mikkelsen is my favorite Lecter of them all.
Words of Wisdom
Irving Berlin: “Life is 10 per cent what you make it, and 90 per cent how you take it.” (Thanks, James)
Mark Larson 