Thanksgiving is the best holiday of the year and it’s really that simple.

Art
Man Conquers the Cosmos, mosaic by Fritz Eisel. Portrait of Elisabeth Bellinghausen, painting by Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder. Pleas and Thank Yous: 100 True Stories, lacquer on aluminum by Gwendolyn Knight. Standing male cupbearer, Sumerian sculpture in calcite with lapis lazuli and shell inlay , ca. 4500–1900 BCE.

Books
Rebecca. For whatever reasons, I thought this was set in the 1800s. Quite a surprise when the main characters spend their time driving around town. Fun so far, so melodramatic!

One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder. Short essays and whispers from memory lane.

The San Quentin Project. Photographs of daily life in the prison, along with work from a photography class with the inmates – their annotations and reflections were super cool.

Around the Web
“That’s a Victor Frankenstein move: Get disappointed that your creation doesn’t immediately match the image in your head, declare it a failure, and abdicate.”

“Art in museums is valuable. And it’s valuable because museums made it that way.”

101 Things I Learned Listening to Every Number One Hit: Part 1.

“Every generation imagines a version of Shakespeare that reflects its own aspirations and anxieties, which means every generation gets him wrong in revealing ways.”

Henry Oliver and Rebecca Lowe discuss theories of time and On the Calculation of Volume, and Solvej Balle’s Novels Rewire the Time Loop.

Requiem for Early Blogging. “If someone wanted to troll you, they’d have to do it on their own site and hope you took the bait because otherwise no one would see it.”

“My philosophy of authenticity is that it doesn’t exist in the way people wish it did. I don’t believe it’s possible to perform in a way that’s authentic. People will say, I just post for myself, which is a lie. They say that because they feel it’s morally better to be that way, and I really disagree with that. It’s okay to feel like you’re performing and even want to perform a bit. That’s not evil. It’s a condition of living.”

“The bottom line is that ‘we’ is squishy. I is the brave pronoun.”

The work of getting people to leave cults. “For that reason, Kelly and Ryan are not looking to convince people of any particular version of reality or truth. They do not seem to be interested in truth at all, really. When you use your experience to test whether or not something is true (the holiness of a guru, the righteousness of a cause) then, Ryan told me: “The person who gives you that experience will own you.” Their work is to usher people into a state of skepticism about the conclusion they have drawn from their experiences; beginning to open them up to the idea that individual experience is not the same as truth or reality.”

Memory Palaces: Exploring the history of London’s cinemas online and on foot.

How to Make a Living as an Artist. “Growing tired of painting something people love is a good problem to have. Do not worry about it until it happens. May you be so lucky.”

Music
A few from drummer Senri Kawaguchi…

• Buena Vista. The main motif in “The Phoenix” is an incredible earworm.
• Cider ~Hard & Sweet~.
• Dynamogenic. “Storm Warning” is a lot of fun.

Charpentier: Messe de Minuit, Ensemble Marguerite Louise dir. Gaétan Jarry. Just exploring another rendition after sampling one last week.

Víkingur Ólafsson, Opus 109 (Beethoven | Bach | Schubert).

Ladytron, Kingdom Undersea.

Movies
You’ve Got Mail. Overall, good watch! Tom Hanks character is a jerk, though? I wonder how it compares with the original. “I wanted it to be you.”

Roter Himmel (Afire). A stressed-out writer tries to finish his work, but everything gets in the way. I really like Christian Petzold’s work overall: Phoenix, Barbara, and Transit are the others I’ve seen.

Sleepless in Seattle. Second viewing (the first). Love the melancholy in this movie – one characters knowing exactly what they’re missing, the other just coming to realize it. Better characters, more funny than You’ve Got Mail.

A House of Dynamite. Choppy Bourne-style editing was a little annoying. A bit on-the-nose in the writing here and there. Suitably stressful. Left me a little cold?

TV
The X-Files, s5e8 “Kitsunegari“.

All Her Fault, s1e3–5.

Winning Time, s2e1.

Thinking about disappointments lately, and the opportunity to double down on what I want regardless. Renewing efforts, aiming for maximal success helps minimize regrets.

Fun exercise: get a big sheet of paper and tape it on the wall. Turn it into a calendar. Add sticky notes for all the travel you plan and want to do in the coming year. Dream it into existence!

A few moments at my favorite burger place a Saturday afternoon:

Art
Tibetan skeleton dance costume in silk and flannel. [Untitled] (Picnic – Fancy Hat), drawing by William Steig. Phoenix and Lobster, woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi. Ceramic shark from the Tolita-Tumaco cultures of coastal Ecuador/Colombia. Silhouettes, woodcut print by Jeanne Amato.

Books
Richard II (Shakespeare). I read a bunch of Shakespeare back in 2021, and this one ranked pretty highly back then. Enjoyed even more after reading The Eagle and the Hart earlier this year. I like the differing gifts and deficits of the main actors, the contrast of moral clarity vs. political success. Richard’s a wastrel in his position as king, but has a depth as tragic figure where you can’t help but feel for him. Everyone else is similarly compromised in some way.

Not sure what’s next. 🤔

Running
More adventures in Bushwick. A lil’ persistent cough keeping the mileage down.

Around the Web
Romanticizing running outside in the winter. “Overcoming your own disapproval of a season will remind you of the impermanence of life around you. Everything is malleable.”

“We’re losing the ability to be influenced by things we don’t fully understand yet.”

“It seems like, by default, you are stuck with whatever level of resourcefulness you brought to a problem the first time you encountered it and failed to fix it.”

How men and women spend their days.

Gender gaps run both ways: the data.

Where do the children play? (via) Pretty wild:

some statistics on the American childhood, drawn from children aged 8-12:

• 45% have not walked in a different aisle than their parents at a store;
• 56% have not talked with a neighbor without their parents;
• 61% have not made plans with friends without adults helping them;
• 62% have not walked/biked somewhere (a store, park, school) without an adult;
• 63% have not built a structure outside (for example, a fort or treehouse);
• 71% have not used a sharp knife;

Even if those are inaccurately inflated by let’s say 2-3x, this seems impoverished!

I like this idea of “resumability“.

A walk around Prospect Heights.

AI-generated Magic cards.

Music
Eleanor Daley: Requiem and Other Choral Works The Choir of Royal Holloway dir. Rupert Gough. Great album. Favorites here are “grandmother moon” and “Open thou mine eyes“.

Sabrina Carpenter, Man’s Best Friend. Glad someone is keeping disco alive: “Tears” is so fun. The rest of the album, I could take or leave. It all sounds very… saturated?

Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Messe de minuit pour Noel. perf. The Virgin Consort cond. Kyler Brown. Preparing my ears for an upcoming concert.

Oneohtrix Point Never, Tranquilizer. All the perfect bleeps and bloops you could hope for! I’ll keep this one in the rotation for a bit longer.

Karina Canellakis conducts Tchaikovsky perf. London Philharmonic.

Bach: The 7 Toccatas perf. Francesco Tristano.

Brahms: Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68 cond. Kirill Petrenko cond. Berliner Philharmoniker.

Faye Webster, Atlanta Millionaires Club. I like the bass and Rhodes and slide guitar in “Right Side of My Neck“.

Movies
Train Dreams. Loved it. I liked the book, too. Joel Edgerton is a natural at the contained, hesitant, introspective roles. as in Master Gardener. (Hereby issuing a challenge to filmmakers, though: show a nostalgic happy memory scene without filming it at golden hour! It’s lazy. People have good memories in all kinds of weather and times of day…)

The Insider. Third viewing, I think. (The first.) This time around, better recognized how the title applies to Bergman as well as Wigand, how he ends up as a sort of whistleblower, too.

TV
The X-Files, s5e7 “Emily”.

Hannibal, s1e11–13.

All Her Fault, s1e1–2.

I put in a lot more hours at the office and wonder, where does motivation come from? Why does work feel like so much fun sometimes, and how do you know whether or not it’s fulfillment or a substitute?

Art
This weekend I saw a nice collection of Faith Ringgold works at Jack Shainman Gallery. Especially liked Coming to Jones Road #2: Sunday Evening on Jones Road, acrylic on canvas with pieced fabric border. Reading and exploring afterward led me to Subway Graffiti # 3, acrylic on canvas pieced fabric.

Another good one this week: Motown in Motion, quilt by Stephen Towns in natural and synthetic fabric, polyester and cotton thread, crystal glass beads, metal and resin buttons.

Books
Crossroads of Twilight. Finishing soon, I think more Shakespeare is up next.

Running
Filled in some map in Bushwick this weekend. Maybe the first time I’ve had nice experience running in that neighborhood. A beautiful autumn morning elevates everything.

Around the Web
Fun Wikipedia wormhole: amate paper, shaft tomb culture, and Olmec colossal heads.

“I’m a huge fan of death. … I think it’s the metronome of our existence.”

Monks in the casino. “Risk-aversion in the social sphere has combined with their risk-chasing in the market, and it’s created a genuinely berserk modern life script.”

When environmentalists choose panic over progress. “Well-intentioned but misinformed resistance to innovation and technology slows progress toward the very objectives environmentalism aims to achieve.”

“It’s astonishing that the richest country in world history could convince itself that it was plundered by immigrants and trade.”

“You can in fact do time travel. You do it by going to some key places right now.”

“i miss blockbuster because it forced you to pick one thing and live with the consequences.”

Friction was the feature. “When the legibility of effort disappears, institutions often fall back to cruder filters”.

The Taliban Drove This Afghan Trumpeter Into Exile. He Still Dreams of Home. (Congrats, Mishti!)

“Does calling a timeout actually do anything? Does it help?” Analyzing timeout strategy in college volleyball.

“Semicolons are humanity’s last stand.”

Atlanta Is… a new podcast on my playlist.

Music
A few albums from Alexandre Kantorow…

• Saint-Saens: Works for Piano & Orchestra
• Brahms: Piano Works. Still don’t love it, but a new appreciation for the Ballades, Op. 10.
• …Plays Brahms & Schubert

A playlist of Chicago House Music.

Movies
Jurassic World Rebirth. Leans toward the horror genre much more, right from the jump. Maybe too much anthropomorphizing with the obnoxious little baby one, and the napping T-Rex. Casual with child endangerment, but too cowardly to let a minor character die off. A mixed bag, but generally sustains the fun of the franchise.

Frankenstein (2025). Sins lead to suffering. Don’t let that happen! I like the Mia Goth’s naturalist wardrobe – feathers, lustrous velvets in green, gold, olive, flashes of purple like beetles. The ending scene at sunrise makes a fun contrast with Nosferatu (2024).

TV
The X-Files, s5e6 “Christmas Carol”.

Hannibal, s1e9.

Back to work in full this week, and back to the office. So nice to get warm welcomes and questions about my travels. Absence makes the heart grow fonder? The ability to work from home so often is priceless. Full-time WFH, though… not for me!

Art
Perils of the Sea Traveller, color stonecut on paper by Pitseolak Ashoona and Mary Pitseolak. It’s Not A Dream If You Will It, mural in the Brownsville neighborhood down the road from me. Untitled (Yellow and White), oil on canvas by Ad Reinhardt.

Books
Crossroads of Twilight, cont. This book is living up to its reputation (but I will finish it).

Running
Took the last several months away from run club, and returned this week. Felt good to be back. After so much vacation time, my weekend long run was a bit of a struggle. Build, decay, rebuild.

Around the Web
Fewer people should run marathons.

“Running a marathon is thus, by definition, uncool. It’s one of the most try-hard things that anyone can do. That’s why people like doing it. It feels really good to try. And it feels even better to try alongside thousands of other people trying, too.”

On the grid. They’re everywhere!

I like the “Does practice make perfect?” illustration in this essay.

“Creativity is just deviance put to good use.” (via)

Don’t Follow Your Dreams, Follow Your Tools.

How Marlon Brando Changed Acting. For as much as I love and watch movies, the nuances of acting are a big knowledge gap. This was cool. (via)

The Columbo Technique for Technical Writers.

How to “Let Them”.

Music
Klaus Schulze, Are You Sequenced? and Another Green Mile. From the second album, “Follow Me Down, Follow Me Down” is a great slow-burn pieces, and also liked “The Wisdom of the Leaves“.

Reba McEntire, What Am I Gonna Do About You. I heard “Why Not Tonight” when I was watching Tremors last week. The title track is great, too.

Brunnenthal 1715: Music for Organ and Cornetto. Much more moody and pensive than I’d expected. The “Chaconne in C major” was my favorite.

Arvo Pärt, …Lente. Mostly familiar material, glad I revisited.

Movies
Compensation. Loved this movie. Told in silent-film style, a story of two deaf Black women, in two different eras, finding love. Love the borrowing from pan-the-photograph documentary style, and vivid captions that let you imagine and dream along with the stories. It will make my end-of-year favorites, top tier.

TV
The X-Files, s5e5 “The Post-Modern Prometheus“. Black-and-white throwback episode in the spirit of James Whale. Fun!

Words of Wisdom
“The best fertilizer is the gardener’s shadow.”

Sick for most of the last week. Travel catching up to me, or something I caught on the last leg of travel. Coughing and coughing and coughing. The cabin fever is excruciating. But with 20/20 hindsight, I’m glad my norms have shifted. Better to be sick at home and working than going into the office and blithely infecting people.

Noticing a new acquisitiveness since I got back from Japan. I think I’m see my old stuff in a new light, feeling a big urge to replace it, overturn the old ways. Not yet sure what’s trying to be expressed. Listening.

Art
The Laughing Demoness (Warai Hannya), from the series “One Hundred Ghost Tales (Hyaku monogatari)”, color woodblock by Katsushika Hokusai. (Thanks, Jara). Still Life with Books, Sheet Music, Violin, Celestial Globe and an Owl, oil on wood by Jacob van Campen. The White Place in Sun, oil on canvas by Georgia O’Keeffe. Sun Beams Slant on the Riverbank and Cold Rain Falls from a Floating Cloud, woodcut print by Stanton Macdonald-Wright. Animal, oil on canvas by Victor Brauner. Boy on horseback watching the Space Shuttle Enterprise being towed across Antelope Valley, photograph by Art Rogers.

Books
Crossroads of Twilight, cont.

Running
n/a, sick! :( Lots of walking this week.

Around the Web
Please take one, wonderful essay on museum brochures.

“Part of “good practice” (deep focus, lots of iteration) is having properly-sized feedback loops. Too short a loop, and it subverts the development of voice (too many other voices jutting in, telling you how to be). Too long a loop, and you might lose momentum (some feedback, properly timed, is critical).”

“If Americans sometimes seem crass or like they take life at an easy stride,
it is largely because they are not idle. To the British temperament, there is something vulgar and unsettled about this lack of idleness. And yet the Americans are quite relaxed. Being busy puts them at ease.”

Can you be serious and seriously glamorous?

“It’s the job of teenagers to annoy, frighten, and bewilder you.”

“One of the most basic presuppositions of communication is that the partners can mutually surprise each other.”

On factory tours.

900 albums of 2024.

Music
Lots of Klaus Schulze. I was using it mostly as wallpaper, but even with lower level of attention, it’s good stuff.

• La Vie Electronique, Vol. 1. Four hours!
• Moondawn
• Transfer Station Blue
• Dreams
• Beyond Recall
• In Blue. See “Wild and blue – Into the Blue“.

Daft Punk, Tron: Legacy OST. Big fan of “Armory“.

Movies
Black Bag. Took a little while to get on its wavelength, but ended up really liking this spy-couple story. Tight focus. Interesting visual choice to have that shimmery soft lighting glow. Appreciate the nod to “Let’s Get Lost“.

Trap. Not sure how I missed it the first time I watched it, but the small profiler role is played by Hayley Mills from The Parent Trap. Interesting that a movie like this can still succeed overall even when prominent characters are badly written/weakly acted. Good bones, good mechanics. Loved the angry conversation over pie.

Tremors. The time I watched this was on TBS or something as a kid. Never could track it down again, though I was generally aware of it. Enjoyed the setting in a dusty little western town, if it even amounts to that much. Don’t see that often.

TV
The X-Files, s5e4, “Detour“. So glad to get back to a monster-of-the-week episode.

Hannibal, s1e4–6. Episode 5, “Coquilles“, is so good, the way it ties together themes of shelter/abandonment, fear/mourning, loss/escapism. Beautiful script, connects the killer-of-the-week to the main characters’ developments, moves the season arc forward, great stuff.

Bob’s Burgers, s16e4.

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)

This weekend we celebrated our anniversary. A highlight was a trip to the Metropolitan Opera, on my local bucket list. I love that we still have grand occasions and spaces like this: tuxes, chandeliers, gold, red velvet, broad curving staircases. Rituals and visuals that dial up your expectations, call your attention to share something outside yourself.

As for the opera itself, we saw Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which I’ve only heard a few excerpts of – the overture and the Commendatore’s re-entrance Great music and great singing (an untrained ear on this part), but I struggled in the second act a bit, where it felt like the momentum lagged. I was most disappointed by the bland staging, tough. Just like the spare set in the production of The Tempest I saw last year. It was all solid blue-greys colors and empty planes, uniform costuming. The transformation at the end was nice, but saving it for the very last few moments made for a leaden visual experience for most of the run – “It’s a famine of beauty, honey!”

“Crudele? Ah! no mio bene” was my favorite aria. There’s a romance to the lyrics, and an earthy practicality: the loving, patient, compromise sometimes needed when committing to a shared vision.

Worked late a lot this week. It eventually caught up with me – I wonder if it contributed to my late-week sniffles? – but i don’t regret it. I had a thought that maybe I’ve been leaving too much buffer, not enough pressure. I default that way, a natural caution and conscientiousness. But it leaves opportunities on the table.

Books
Sense and Sensibility. Finished this yesterday and loved it. I’d rank it below Pride & Prejudice, along with most other books.

Running
A steady but lighter week, tapering a bit before a race next Sunday. This morning was a map-filling run to finish off the last few streets in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood.

Around the Web
Brian Eno in conversation with Ezra Klein. A fun idea: “Children learn through play and adults play through art” (of course not the only way). And this was nicely put: “When we look at any piece of art, we are not looking just at that piece of art; we are looking at this piece of art in terms of our personal history. It’s like you are hearing the latest sentence in a conversation you’ve been having for your whole life.”

Alain de Botton in conversation with David Perell. On following the news too closely: “Our inner lives have been industrialized.”

“A lot of anxiety can disappear if you stop trying to solve things once and for all and just accept that some questions are meant to be asked.”

“Parties are a public service“.

“If it hurts, do it more often.”

“Technologists and techno-optimists need to realize that the way we talk about innovation in articles, in ads, and in manifestos is often suboptimal for the goal of trying to convince skeptics of the value of progress.”

Selling Lemons: The hidden costs of the meta game. “If a buyer can’t distinguish between good and bad, everything gets priced somewhere in the middle. If you’re selling junk, this is fantastic news”

“Absent legacy-media prestige or any earlier outdated marker of status, a way to distinguish yourself, to exhibit prestige, is to be an ambassador for a more prestigious brand.” and We are the slop.

Music
Curtis Harding, Departures & Arrivals: Adventures of Captain Curt. Self-described “slop ‘n’ soul” that grows on me day by day. I like the lead guitar in “The Winter Soldier“.

Star Feminine Band, Jusqu’au bout du monde. Upbeat, Beninese garage rock. Big fan, check out the title track.

Marshall Allen, The Omniverse Oriki. Heavily chant-inflected noise, jazz, exploration? Didn’t click.

Daryl Johns, Daryl Johns. Throwback-y pop/muzak/mall jazz/sitcom intro music, calling back to Sting or Toto or Rick Springfield or the like. “I’m So Serious” is a good example.

Clipse, Let God Sort Em Out. “E.B.I.T.D.A.” is so, so fun.

Witchcraft, Idag. Open bluesy metal that made me think of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, etc..

Christopher Stark, Fire Ecologies. Orchestral spookiness. I like the ticking-clock edginess of “Scene 4: Infernal Dance“.

A co-worker mentioned Midland, “Final Credits” as a favorite. (Dance music is often great for work, too. Discuss.)

Two albums from Takashi Kokubo, like vaguely dark and sentimental lullabies with nature sounds: Forest and Gaiaphilia.

Movies
Crimson Peak. The third time I’ve seen it (first, second). Love it. Horror needs more romance – passions heighten danger!

TV
Line of Duty, s4e5–6. I love this show.

Alien: Earth, s1e3. Circled back for one last try. The cyborg guy is intriguing, but for the most part it’s just not working for me.

Last weekend felt like I barely had any time. Felt good to get back to routine, and by comparison, feels like I’ve been luxuriating in vast expanses of time to work with, happily filled. A good feeling.

Art
Polaroid-style paintings by Edward Cushenberry. Untitled (Harlequin), paper and box construction by Joseph Cornell. Wise Elders Portraiture Class at Centro Tyrone Guzman with En Familia hay Fuerza, oil on linen by Aliza Nisenbaum.

Books
The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV. Finished. Maybe my favorite of the year, after Middlemarch. I was sad when it ended.

Sense and Sensibility. Just started! (Turning into an accidental Brit Lit year…)

Running
Yesterday’s long run was tough. I bet the layoff/irregularity of the travel week threw things off, and odd timing last week. Filled in a few more pockets of the Brooklyn map, which feels good.

Around the Web
“Instead of Depression“, poem by Andrea Gibson.

“I do not think reading is morally good, creates empathy, or a duty. Take all that off the table. We’re just talking about fun here.” (via)

Reading with AI.

“The chat context is, among many other things, a handy illusion that conceals a great weakness of current LLMs: their slowness.”

From burner phones to decks of cards: NYC teens are adjusting to the smartphone ban.

“The way that we manage temptation as a society is through manners, expectations, and peer pressure.”

The percentage of Americans saying college is “very important” has fallen to 35%.

Field Noise is back!

What is an American? and “National” conservatism is un-American.

A 160-pound hiker carries about 44 liters of body water. Losing 1% of body mass as water (i.e., 0.73 liters, about 25 ounces) is the first threshold where performance starts to slip.

Music
Phantoms, Phantoms, and the “Perpetual Motion” single are both fun high-energy dance albums.

Nourished by Time, The Passionate Ones. A genre-crossing, a very “headphones” album. “It’s Time“.

Duffy x Uhlmann, Doubles.. Intimate guitar duo, no stand-outs, but all of it worth a listen.

Ezra Collective, Dance, No One’s Watching. Dancehall funk, I like “The Traveller“.

Baby Rose, BADBADNOTGOOD, Slow Burn. I like the backing music/arrangements a lot but the singing style, and the shound of awll the chewred-up shlurrred wuordsh, is really grating for me. :(

La Harp Reine: Concertos for Harp at the Court of Marie-Antoinette perf. Les Arts Florissant, Xavier De Maistre cond. William Christie. I like how the limited volume of the harp forces the orchestra to stand back a bit, even more than usual for concertos.

Movies
Knives Out. Re-watch, still fun, and funnier than I remembered.

District 13. Another re-watch, still fun. There is a certain delight in seeing physical/athletic greatness on screen, often worth the drop in dramatic/acting talent.

Saved!. Light teen comedy skewering a certain strain of Christian moralizing. We don’t often see people sincerely wrestling with their religion on screen.

TV
Alien: Earth, s1e1–2. Some interesting additions to the mythology but something is just slightly off. Not sure if I’ll continue (but I might!).

CSI: Miami, s6e18. One of the worst-written/looking episodes.

Words of Wisdom
“The people close to you can make their exit out of your life, either by choice or by death. Act accordingly.” and “Call your mom. Call your brother. Call the homeboy you used to party with in college. Forever is a long time.”

Last week I went to Los Angeles. My first time back since I moved here to Brooklyn. Took some trips down memory lane – my old apartment, favorite coffee shop, neighborhoods and restaurants with good memories – and also remembered what a lonely and strange time it was. I’d arrived there just a few weeks before the first inklings of a new virus, and a couple months later, lockdown. Happy to be there, and remembered what drew me west, but lots of old emotions shook loose, rose to the surface.

I remember when I first left I had a feeling that I might need to go back at some point and try again. I’m not sure that itch is there the same way. I’d be happy to live there again, but it’s less… mysterious now? A known quantity for the right time of life, whenever that may be.

I rode in a Waymo for the first time while I was out there. It was such an odd mix of mind-blowing experience – wow! it’s really happening! – and just completely mundane. After a few minutes, it felt totally normal and safe and pleasant. Hard to imagine going backwards from here. (I think I also feel safer as a pedestrian, seeing how well it picked up on runners!)

I also had my first experience on a diverted flight when thunderstorms shut down JFK, and my first time visiting (a hotel on the fringes of) Detroit. Lucky that I don’t have more travel scars of this kind.

Art
California Copied from 1965 Painting in 1987, acrylic on canvas by David Hockney. Seated Male Figure, burnished ceramic with slip from Colima, Mexico ca. 200 BCE–500 CE.

Relative to the Getty and the Broad, I think LACMA – the We Live in Painting: The Nature of Color in Mesoamerican Art exhibit was super-cool – and the Hammer Museum – really liked Rising Sun, Falling Rain: Japanese Woodblock Prints from the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts – deserve much more attention.

Books
The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV. Now firmly into Henry IV’s reign. I might keep reading history in this region or era for a while? I’ve enjoyed pairing with some LLM Q&A as I go along.

Running
Last week all of my running was in my old Santa Monica neighborhood. Mostly around 5am, to squeeze it in before work on east-coast hours. Nothing beats a run on a quiet moonlit street.

Around the Web
Why our house is a library.

“The beautiful thing about travel is that it teaches people how to enjoy themselves in spite of a near-constant stream of small disappointments.”

“Air conditioning use in European countries remains around 19 percent overall, with much lower rates in specific countries—only about 5 percent of homes in the UK have cooling systems, and just 3 percent in Germany.” And speculations on the class dynamics of air conditioning in Europe. I’m enjoying this beat.

Maybe trains are not abundant?

Music
Gabriela Ortiz, Yanga perf. Los Angeles Philharmonic cond. Gustavo Dudamel. I like the hand drums and general expansion of the percussion section, but I just could not get into this.

Marconi Union, The Fear of Never Landing. Final track – “Cloud Surfing” is one I had on repeat for a while.

Until Death Overtakes Me, Diagenesis. Gloomy droning funeral metal. I like it!

Mozart!

• Flute Concertos perf. Anna Besson, Clara Izambert, Reinoud Van Mechelen, A Nocte Temporis. The Andantino from the concerto for flute and harp is undeniable.
• Violin Concertos Nos. 3 & 4 perf. Francesca Dego, Sir Roger Norrington con. Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
• Piano Concertos perf. Jeremy Denk with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. I used to read Jeremy Denk’s blog quite a bit, so a novel surprise to see this one pop up in search. Timpani adds so much to the opening of the D minor piano concerto – a punch you simply can’t get with just the strings and winds.

Nei giardini d’amore: Baroque arias for 2 alti perf. Carlo Vistoli, Hugh Cutting, William Christie, Les Arts Florissants. “Sempre piango e dir non so” was the stand-out for me.

Movies
Ingrid Goes West. The influencer cliches feel a bit dated and worn already, but luckily it’s more focused on the obsessive fandom turned sour. Good physical comedy, too.

Zodiac. I think this is the 4th time I’ve seen it? It’s so easy to watch this movie.

Drumline. Love seeing Atlanta on film. The main character is very annoying but loved Orlando Jones as the band director.

TV
Binging a new TV obsession one week, and then completely abstaining the next week.

Line of Duty, s2e6 and Line of Duty, s3e1–6. Interrogation scenes are consistently great in this show. Not sure I’ve seen many other TV shows use them as effectively.

Words of Wisdom
“One band, one sound!”

Art
Moses and the Burning Bush, acrylic on canvas by Keith Haring. Stahlwork, aerial photography of steel production by Bernhard Lang.

Books
Wolf Hall. DNF. Good read, but I lost my momentum somehow. Maybe just need more plot, less character?

On the Calculation of Volume, Book 1. Boring in the details it covered but somehow mildly addictive. (Maybe a little bit like My Struggle?) I think I’ll probably skip the sequel and the other five books, but you never know.

The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV. So many details, but I’m into it.

Running
For my work run club, we got custom singlets. 😎

Around the Web
“If your hobby looks exhausting to someone else, that means it’s really yours.”

I need to get back to England for the Stanley Donwood/Thom Yorke exhibition at the Ashmolean.

Is air travel getting worse?

ldial: Listen to the best independent and community radio stations in the US. Felt really good to flip on Atlanta’s WREK 91.1 on a Sunday morning.

The Social History of the Code Machine. “Timeless values like remaining disciplined under pressure are expressed in actions like marching in a straight line and we become attached to those actions rather than the values. When technology changes those actions, it feels viscerally wrong to us.”

NYC’s Median Rent is ~$1.6k, and How That is Even Possible.

Where to Look: The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

A 2000-year-old Roman sun hat.

Skateboarding Into Middle Age. And “Skateboarding is the only recreational activity that my kids have pursued in the city that has not required a membership, formal belonging to an organization, or that is dictated by a specific schedule”. I started skating a bit at the office, a few minutes each morning when I go in. I’m terrible and it’s great.

Music
Marconi Union, The Fear of Never Landing. “Eight Miles High Alone” and “Crystalline” are my faves.

Jenevieve, Crysalis. Haven’t stopped listening since I started it. We need more albums with songs that just crisply end, instead of fade out! “Crysalis“, love the big bass and splashy cymbals. “Haiku” and “Naive” are lovely ballads. “Missing Persons” sounds like something I’d hear from Kacey Musgraves (complimentary). I love the echoes of R&B predecessors – “Head Over Heels” is kind of a waste lyrically, but the Quiet Storm production is great. “Hvn High” revives the Michael Jackson era. “Nocturne” has the ’80s keyboard woodwinds and backbeat. “Faded Lve” with the 70s disco/funk rhythm guitar and walking bass. I love the soda-shop harmonies in “Damage Control“. All that in 42 minutes. What a fun album.

Four Tet, There Is Love In You. I like the faster-paced, glitchier stuff like “Sing“.

Blackbraid, Blackbraid III.

Movies
It Follows. Second viewing (the first). Holds up! I didn’t remember how Detroit-y this movie is. Abandonment of the city echoed by the abandonment of the youth. I want to spend more time with the soundtrack soon.

A Working Man. Jason Statham is just trying to be a regular guy! Give you one guess what happens next.

TV
Ballard, s1e9–10. I hope they find better writers for the next season, but I like the little family they’ve formed in the basement.

Line of Duty, s4-5. Has some of the most maddening protagonists you’ll ever find. I’ll return for a second season.

I already had a lot of experience when I joined my team at work. Through some internal moves and a wave of new hires, I’ve accidentally become one of the longest-tenured. I am The Veteran. Welcoming the recent crop of ~new-grad hires and helping them find their footing has made me realize how much I take for granted. So much just comes easily. Makes me think back to my days working in a public library when I was shortly out of college. I had a couple teammates nearing or past retirement age. Nothing phased them. Objectively, I understood why – they’d seen it all for decades. But of course I couldn’t muster the same ease in the same way, though I tried. And I was glad to have the model. So, on my mind lately: what do I want my version of leadership to look like? What’s the stamp I want to make? And who am I looking up to now?

Art
Landscape (Bordeaux II), oil on canvas by Amédée Ozenfant. Hautajaiset (Funeral), sculpture by Axel Robert Petersson. Portrait of Joaneta Obrador, oil on canvas by Joan Miró.

Books
Winter’s Heart. Done. 9 down, 5 to go?

Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over by Nell Painter. DNF. Memoir just isn’t for me.

Brave New World, Huxley, DNF, dreadful.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. Just started.

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
In Praise of More Hangout Modalities.

Summer Travel: Less Phone, More Sketchbook. (via)

“That’s why I encourage everyone to walk and take buses whenever you can, because you end up dealing with people who remind you what humanity actually is. Not the polished cartoonish version we’re supposed to aspire to, but the far more common messy, complicated, and resilient version.”

“We owe our electric age to scientists who were crazy, ignorant, or both.”

Idea for a “cover index” to measure great songs.

RIP, Mark Snow.

Music
Mozart Piano Sonatas perf. Angela Hewitt. Cool to hear how much change there can be over a decade and a bit. You can hear really Beethoven bubbling up by the time you reach K.457.

• Piano Sonatas K.279–284 & K.309
• Piano Sonatas K.310–311 & 330–333
• Piano Sonatas K.457, 533, 545, 570, & 576

A bit of nostalgic return to Washed Out…

• Life of Leisure EP. “Feel It All Around” feels like stepping into a shower. “Hold Out” has the perfect drive for a workout.
• Within and Without. “Soft” has a nice mix of melancholy and hopefulness. I have such a vivid memory hearing “You and I” for the first time at one of their shows, bass player vamping in front of a box fan tilted up and blowing his hair.

Addison Rae, Addison. It’s not for me, but it goes down smooth and leaves no aftertaste.

Movies
Fast & Furious. This didn’t hold up at all for me. It was sad that I felt so remote from it all. Action pieces didn’t land, relationships felt thrown together. Felt like I was mixing essential context from a TV show or something. (Has it really been 12 years since the last time I saw it?)

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Now this is a movie! Dudes being dudes. Naval warfare is one of the craziest things we’ve ever done.

TV
The X-Files, s4e24 “Gethsemane“. A bit of an underwhelming season finale, but maybe there’s some courage in not relying on traditional cliffhangers. We’ve been watching every Sunday night for the last 18 months or so. Taking a break for a little while!

Ballard, s1e1–2. So far, scratches the itch. I need a beach house.

Art
A Mayan blackware ceramic vessel modeled in the form of an owl. [Untitled] (Sax Player), print from engraving on plexiglass by Scott Smith. Landscape with Charon Crossing the Styx, oil on wood by Joachim Patinir.

Books
Winter’s Heart. Homestretch.

Running
Feels good to steadily pick up my volume and consistency since late winter. Yesterday I went on my longest run of the year so far, and today, no ill effects. Still one of my favorite ways to explore the city. (Mill Basin is a strange little self-contained world. Felt like I was in Florida.)

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
From a profile of an archaeologist couple: “One of the reasons we’re able to make as many contributions as we have is that we stayed put at one site for a long period of time and we just kept asking questions.”

“Given Canada’s vast size and low population density, I was surprised to discover that the country feels more urban than the US, with far more skyscrapers per capita.”

Young families have stopped leaving big cities, for now.

Thoughts from buses across America. “In any town such as Harrisburg, you can have two very different experiences, one optimistic, the other pessimistic, and that is the defining feature of the US.”

‘No One Else Has a Bike Like Mine’: How Deliveristas Trick Out Their Rides.

“AI feedback (“you raise a profound point”) creates a new market niche for the offhand, the critical or slightly dismissive, the kinds of response only a slightly jaded human being can currently provide.”

“I painstakingly printed out my social media feeds FOR AN ENTIRE MONTH so I could read them like a newspaper, as god intended.”

NYC art schools see record-high application numbers as Gen Zers clamber to enroll.

“I’ve been sober for six years now; and that kind of milestone does something to your perception of time. It creates a before and an after, and it invites you – gently at first, then insistently – to take stock.”

Growth, not gain.

A visual research tool that maps out a Wikipedia rabbit hole.

Music
Cerrone, Christine and the Queens, Catching feelings. Fun! Good pop/EDM/disco feel.

Laura Cannell, A Compendium of Beasts, mixing olde medieval and folk traditions:

• Volume 1
• Volume 2
• Volume 3

Domenico Scarlatti, Sonatas, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 perf. Angela Hewitt. I’m partial to the B minor, Kk.27 and the G minor, Kk.426 seems to anticipate Chopin or the like.

Movies
Red Eye (2005). Tight thriller. I like the focus on only two actors for most of the runtime. Helps that both are charming.

Battle Royale. Second viewing. I love the melodrama – heightened with teenage hormones – and how we learn about so many relationships in the school. Beautiful soundtrack mixing in classical orchestral work.

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Still so fun. I think the characters actually work on their cars more than any other film in the franchise. That’s cool. I think this is the third or fourth time I’ve seen it? (Previously.)

TV
The X-Files, s4e23 “Demons”.. Feels like I’ve seen this one a few times before (i.e. Mulder perseverating on sister trauma → unhinged behavior → getting arrested).