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.

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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).

I fear that I haven’t paid much attention to my day-to-day life lately.

Art
Approaching Storm, print by Grant Wood. A 19th-century Earthenware pitcher, made in Bangor, Maine.. A male figure in the Nomoli style.

Books
Winter’s Heart. It feels good when you learn how to read a particular book.

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
“It wasn’t because I was smarter or more dedicated, but simply because I’d been looking directly at a specific problem they only encountered as part of a much larger institutional landscape.”

“By their late thirties, nearly two-thirds of people born in Wyoming have moved to other states.”

“Here I pause for one moment, to exhort the reader never to pay any attention to his understanding, when it stands in opposition to any other faculty of his mind. The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind, and the most to be distrusted.”

Road House: The Perfect ’80s Western. “Dalton is Fonzie-cool, Eastwood-mysterious, and physically pristine.”

Why are movies about research so addictive?

The Sustained Two-Shot.

Ryan Coogler talks about film stock and aspect ratios.

Beatrice Chebet breaks the 14-minute 5k barrier.

Music
Taylor McFerrin, Early Riser. Jazz/soul/electronic. I like all all the layering in “Postpartum“, and I think that’s also what I respond to in “Already There” – something to latch onto no matter where you put your ear.

Daoud’s soda single. “plato’s twins” has been on repeat, with a restlessness that reminds me of Harmony of Difference-era Kamasi Washington. The full GOOD BOY album was merely good.

Muslimgauze, Single #One.

Movies
You Hurt My Feelings. Such good heart in this one. Love how it portrays how we all seek and need validation outside ourselves (even though we might know better?), and the payoff that can come from trusting, again and again.

The Hunger Games. The shakiest camera you’ve ever seen. (Previously.)

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. Charming as usual. I always wish these were paced just a hair faster.

Transporter 2. Cross an Audi commercial with CSI: Miami b-roll, mix in some Jackie Chan-tics, you got yourself a stew.

Skyfall. So dreary. I give up! I don’t like James Bond! (Previously.)

TV
The X-Files, s4e22 “Elegy“. The events/mystery side of this is a mess, but appreciated some nuance in the Scully/Mulder relationship.

Couples Therapy, s4e13–18.

Department Q, s1e9. I don’t like watching someone get tortured for a full season, but hard not to like a grumpy, swaggering detective.

CSI: Miami, s8e19. Young Alan Ritchson!

I’m just hunkering down and avoiding the heat as much as I can.

Art
Bird on a branch in front of a skyline, illustration by Leo Gestel. Illustration (Typhoon), woodcut by Edward Alexander Wadsworth. Mithila/Madhubani school illustration of Three Figures: woman with two children playing ball. Drying the Linen, or Moonrise at the Priory, oil on canvas by Maurice Denis.

Books
Winter’s Heart. I guess we’re doing this!

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
How to Surf the Web in 2025, and Why You Should. “To surf, you must begin on a normal website with outbound links, and avoid all the algorithm-driven thoroughfares (Reddit, YouTube, X, any ‘apps’) that direct most of today’s internet traffic. You also have to be on a real computer, not a phone. If you end up on social media, you’re no longer surfing.”

macOS Icon History.

The trend in book covers with bright type over a painting.

Which book genres are men or women more likely to leave reviews for?

NYC bakeries that sell one thing.

Can AI speak the language Japan tried to kill?

Why Does Every Commercial for A.I. Think You’re a Moron?

Heir Ball: How the Cost of Youth Sports Is Changing the N.B.A..

Music
The Knife, Tomorrow, In a Year. Reminded me of mid-19th-century opera.

Bronski Beat, The Age of Consent. I like the slinky, bluesy city feel in “Love and Money“.

Billy Idol, Rebel Yell. So good! “Rebel Yell” is eternal. Ditto for “Eyes Without a Face“.

Mark Pritchard, Thom Yorke, Tall Tales. “Back in the Game” and “The Spirit“.

Movies
Avengers: Endgame. Too many speeches, and the number of storylines to touch on kills the momentum, and its too timid to land the sentimental Americana register it dabbles in here and there… but still a good conclusion to this arc. (Maybe I just prefer the gloom of Infinity War?)

TV
The X-Files, s4e21 “Zero Sum“. “A man digs a hole, he risks falling into it.” See Proverbs 26:27.

Couples Therapy, s4e7–12.

Our Great National Parks, s1e2.

Dept. Q, s1e7.

I remember getting really grumpy that first Sunday in June. Lots of waiting, and random empty timeslots to fill. Nothing clicking. This last Sunday, stark contrast: up at 530am, out the door before 6am, and a morning of trailrunning ahead of me. Always the balance of planning enough that I don’t feel lost, but not so much that I feel hemmed in. Self-management is hard!

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Last Friday evening we went to see the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at BAM. Treading was an excellent duet (Steve Reich soundtrack!), but I looooooved Grace. It opens with a delicate solo that had this edgy restlessness lying underneath, then turns into a huge ensemble piece switching between gospel, house, afrobeat soundtracks. High energy, super cool, great costuming, too.

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I got a new laptop and it’s great and perfect and… underwhelming. I no longer feel the quiet fury and resignation and impatience I’d feel watching the old one slowly grind through clicks and keystrokes. But in the end, just another screen and keyboard?

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Some friends visited the city earlier this week, their kids in tow, and enjoyed the brief window into the kookiness and chaos that is the young mind. The one who barely looked at me when introducing myself soon latched on, eating up every morsel of attention. The distinct personalities with just a handful of years. The way brothers alternately admire and despise each other in 5-minute cycles. What a ride.

Art
Tapestries by Sam Dienst. Meditating Frog by Sengai Gibon. Aztec figure carrying corn.

Books
Extinction. Finished, glad I read it, good change of pace. The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James, a magical realist western, didn’t click with it, DNF’ed. The Story of King Arthur and his Knights by Howard Pyle, just started.

Running
Most recent highlight was doing some trailrunning up along the Hudson River valley. We took the Metro North train up to Manitou, stepped off onto a quiet country road, ran up into the hills and ridges, eventually descending back to Garrison (where we saw the train coming around the corner and finished with a desperate, exhausted last-minute sprint) to catch the train back home.

I’m feeling… excited for summer long runs!?

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
Musical stars we’re forgetting and when pop music went supernova.

Italo Calvino’s 14 Criteria for What Makes a Classic. (via)

How to Live on $432 a Month in America. “For the right young person — there are many opportunities to stop pointing the finger at the boomer and to become the boomer, if they so choose.” (via)

Things To Do While Waiting.

It’s a great time to be a human philosopher.

“[LLMs] devour schlep, and clear a path to the important stuff, where your judgement and values really matter.”

Nice rocks.

Federal law enforcement funds would be better spent solving all murders instead of deporting people.

Music
A couple albums from Of the Trees…

• Harvest
• The Tale of the Elegos. I like this one more, felt more cohesive, more natural flow.

André 3000, 7 piano sketches.

Zeena Hawkins, Three Harps, Tuning Forks & Electronics. I feel like this album title is directly marketed to me, specifically. “Tuning Forks” is great.

Ghost, Skeletá. Theatrical metal, so fun.

Brahms: Symphony No. 4 perf. Wiener Philharmoniker cond. Carlos Kleiber.

Two from Justice, both fun in the moment, but not a ton of staying power for me…

• Justice. “Genesis” is a good start, like a movie overture. Then turns into a good stank-face romp.
• Hypderdrama

Some quiet piano albums from Elijah Fox…

• Ambient Works for the Highways of Los Angeles
• City in the Sky

Steve Reich, Music for 18 Musicians. Heard this again at the Alvin Ailey show and remembered why I love it.

The Knife, The Knife. I like the messy jagged guitar reverb in “I Take Time“

Movies
For a good while there I was burned out on superhero movies and Marvel specifically. I’ve been playing catch-up, and enjoying it.

The Incredible Hulk (2008). I’ve never spent much time with Hulk comics or otherwise. I think I prefer how Ruffalo carries the role, but I love how this one looks, and gave me a new appreciation for the character.

Avengers: Age of Ultron. Probably the best villain in the whole arc?

Spider-Man: Homecoming. Spider-Man/Peter Parker is at his best when he’s a teen, rather than a bumbling adult. (Or maybe you need to be Christopher Reeve to pull it off the type?)

Thor: Ragnarok. It’s fun. I wish more of the movies were this colorful and silly.

TV
The X-Files, s4e18 “Max“. “Men with spartan lives, simple in their creature comforts, if only to allow for the complexity of their passions.”

The X-Files, s4e19 “Synchrony“. Surprised it took so long to do time travel. Or am I forgetting other episodes?

Reacher, s3e8. Each season has gotten worse. Disappointing trend!

I don’t miss Twitter and for the first time in a long time, I gave serious thought to deleting my account. Doesn’t feel the same when I hop on. The magic is gone. Some change in audience and content over the last decade+, sure, but maybe it’s just I have changed? I keep bringing this up (like in week 18) because I didn’t full expect it to happen. I thought I was just going to take it off my phone, refocus a bit. In the past, while never a heavy poster, I was a diehard at-least-daily reader and generally unabashed fan. It felt like the nerve center for all my interests. Now, it’s a place I find interesting for a few minutes every week or so. Things change.

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Highlights from last week include the Liberty vs. Valkyries game (wiped the floor with them), and the Powerhouse Arts Community Day, where I learned about Mucky the Dolphin.

Art
Almondsbury to Temple Quay, map in stitched canvas with hand painted silk applique by Kate Tarling. Edtaonisl (Ecclesiastic), painting by Francis Picabia. Bōtarō’s Nurse Otsuji Prays to the God of Konpira for His Success, color woodblock print by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. A 2nd-century Roman brooch in the form of a dog attacking a boar.

Books
Rainbows End. Finally done! Appreciate the amnesia revival, wearables, competing augmented realities, asshole protagonist

Extinction, by Douglas Preston. Fun murder mystery with debts to Jurassic Park. There’s a lot of value in “whatever keeps the pages turning”.

Running
After a great stretch last week, this week I barely ran at all. On the bright side, got to fill in some big gaps in my map. I really love learning all these Brooklyn neighborhoods first-hand.

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
The case for more public youth art.

Adjusting for demographics and income, the South is an educational powerhouse.

In the U.S., more people work for the MTA than in coal mining.

Very strange and cool to see an LLM talk about how it thinks.

What happens when the intelligence goes out?

Scott Sumner suggests some overlooked films.

The Entity: On the Technologies of Late Cruisedom.

Clint Eastwood: “There are directors who lose their touch at a certain age, but I’m not one of them.”

Music
A few more form Jon Hopkins. Enjoyable, but none of them latched onto my soul the way my first exposure did back in week 15.

• RITUAL (nothing is lost)
• Opalescent
• Late Night Tales
• Immunity

Blackbraid,”War Drums at Dawn on the Day of My Death“. Metal!

Elliot Cole: Percussion Music. Inventive, exploers the full spectrum of possibilities. Enjoyed this more than I expected.

Movies
Now You See Me. Did not enjoy! Wish we spent more time with the magicians instead of the cops. Maybe it all works better on a big screen?

The Return. I like how this film takes the events of The Odyssey for granted. We see everyone exhausted with this era of their lives, reckoning with what must come next. Ralph Fiennes is shredded! I hope I look as good in my 60s as he and Binoche do.

TV
The X-Files, s4e17 “Tempus Fugit”. A hangar and a cliffhanger!

Reacher, s3e6-7. Ready for it to end.

Words of Wisdom
“Nibble, and your appetite will grow.”

One of those periods where life runs away with me and other things fall away. A busier period than usual. In the middle of the worst of it, I felt oversaturated and exhausted. After the fact, not too bad? There’s a lesson in there.

All started on Sunday night a couple weeks ago, random dinner out at a new place… before leaving the next morning for a three-day work retreat the next morning. (One big adjustment: my wife travels for work much more often than I do, so it felt weird to be the one leaving her behind.)

Our company went up to MASS MoCA, and took over the museum. What a treat to have a place like that to ourselves. One morning, after a 5am wake-up, I got to have a James Turrell piece all to myself for a while. The huge Sol Lewitt collection was probably my fave, though.

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Came back to reality and been playing catch-up since then. But I lucked into a concert on Friday with Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion at BAM. Really awesome performance. Loved how they played with lamps, and used the instrument blankets to build out the set as the show went on.

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Last Saturday and Sunday, I took a two-day workshop about weaving at the Textile Arts Center. I know how to use a loom now! Started from yarns, measured out the warps, strung it all up, and then played with different patterns.

Mission accomplished for me: I have a much, much deeper appreciation for the history of the tradition, and the incredible labor and thoughtfulness that goes into this craft. And I’m really happy with how my little sampler turned out:

Maybe it will move from casual exploration to a classic hobby?

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I continue to be Twitter-less or Twitter-lite these days, keeping it desktop-only. Yesterday I put it back on my phone, stayed up too late scrolling for nothing in particular… and then woke up and immediately started scrolling for nothing in particular lol. It’s amazing to watch the casino addiction re-form so quickly – deleted again!

Books
Rainbows End. Library loan expired. Guess I gotta buy it now.

Winter’s Heart, cont.

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
Designing for constraints in education. “We have to design for the standard days not the ideal ones.”

Mississippi Schools Are Better Than Yours. “Painting the Deep South as an embarrassing cultural backwater is one of the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice among elites.”

3 thoughts while pushing a wheelbarrow.

“If the United States had matched the rate of improvement in road safety since the 1970s seen in, for example, the Netherlands, Sweden, or Spain, it would have prevented 2 out of every 3 road deaths.”

Appreciating the architecture and optimism of Radio City.

Music
Inspired by the concert, dived back into Shaw/Sō again, all strongly recommended…

• Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part
• Partita for 8 Voices
• Ringdown, Lady on the Bike and Ghost
• Fleishman Is in Trouble OST
• Glenn Kotche: Drumkit Quartets

Also played:

• Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, Ex Tenebris Lux. String orchestra texture and swells.
• Francisco Mora Catlett, Outerzone. Free-spirited jazz and noise.
• Howie Lee, Event, Fact, and Those which are emphasized. Glitchy electronic patches and samples and explorations.
• Harald Grosskopf, Synthesist. German electro!
• Songs from the Kitchen Disco: Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Greatest Hits. Listened to this after hearing “Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)” on the dancefloor.
• Leyla McCalla, A day for the hunter, a day for the prey. Haitian-inflected folk.
• Bela Fleck, Zakir Hussain, Edgar Meyer, The Melody of Rhythm. It’s an interesting mash-up from insanely talented people, but I don’t think it’s a successful one?

Movies
State of Play. Fun re-watch. Journalism can be really compelling – underdogs, persistence, troublemaking.

Practical Magic. Totally charming! Really enjoyed it, and appreciated how many odd little turns it took, and tension drawn out from people who aren’t sure why they’re behaving the way they are. And briefly, one of the best road trip scenes you’ll ever see.

The Order. Really like this one, too. A crime drama that’s not quite gritty or grim, just… worn down? (And maybe I need a mustache again…)

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. Desert sandstorm shootout is really cool, the chase scene with the little yellow car is still perfect, and so is the fight in the narrow alley. Warming up for the grand finale.

TV
The X-Files, s4e16 “Unrequited“. Vietnam vets again!

Reacher, s3e4. Reacher is too sociopathic. I’ll still finish the season, I think.

CSI: Miami, s7e18.

I don’t remember when I took Twitter off of my phone. A month ago, a month and change? It’s become more like a weekly treat on a Saturday or Sunday morning on the laptop. I feel like I’m missing out on a ton, but mostly don’t think about it. I feel less distracted, less twitchy, reading more, having fewer “where did the evening go?” moments. It’s a good change.

Art
Vessel in the Form of a Circular Pyramid from Colima, Mexico, c. 300 BCE–300 CE. Blue House (from Food Clothing Shelter portfolio), 1996, photogravure on paper by Laurie Simmons. Pueblo vase in sterling silver, 1893 by George Paulding Farnham. Brooklyn Summer Friday Night, 1954, oil on canvas by Diana Korzenik.

Books
Rainbows End, cont.. Favorite part so far is this idea of reviving people afflicted with Alzheimer’s, what they might experience as they return to full understanding of the world.

Running
A fun week of running – a Sunday long run visit to Marine Park and the salt marsh, another touring through Red Hook this morning. Running with new friends, a sunset run on Tuesday and an impromptu club run before work on Friday. It’s felt pleasantly erratic.

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
An appreciation of Revenge of the Sith. Do we make “downer epics” anymore?

Robert Daniels and Odie Henderson talk about Sinners.

Your next best friend.

Who’s most likely to change (or hyphenate) their name after marriage?

“The TikTokers documenting themselves wading into the sea, reading by the beach, drinking espresso, and riding Vespas for the sake of #eurocore are live-action role-playing Europeanness, in Europe. Which is, of course, what tourists have been doing for centuries.”

“People like to psych themselves up by talking about how there’s no point in winning elections if we’re not going to stand up for our core values, but the converse is equally if not more true — there’s no point in articulating a policy agenda that stands no chance of being enacted.”

Lamenting the kerning on Pope Francis’ tomb.

Music
Various, Sinners OST. Ginz Zilbalodis and Rihards Zalupe, Flow OST. Harald Grosskopf, Ümit Han, Magnetfeld. Darkside, Nothing.

Movies
Gone Girl. Fourth viewing (my notes on the previous three). It has such a mesmerizing pace. The media angle really struck me this time, the need to play to the cameras.

Ex Machina. Third viewing (the first two). Felt a little impatient this time, but I think I appreciate each of the individual performances more. Nuanced work.

Along with The Social Network last week, these made for a fun accidental trilogy on tech/media/misogyny.

TV
The X-Files, s4e15 “Kaddish“. Golem!

Reacher, s3e1–2. When I say this I mean it literally: I don’t know what’s going on.

Felt like a bit of auto-pilot this week, activities on most evenings and packed days in between.

Books
Bright Young Women by Jessical Knoll. A little disappointed in the end, as it veered away from what I was most interested in, but it kept me turning pages, and that’s victory enough.

Rainbows End: A Novel With One Foot In The Future by Vernor Vinge. Just begun – lively!

Running
A return to a higher-mileage week after winter dormancy. Also ran with a group from the office, which was novel. (Running in Manhattan at 6pm is really annoying!)

Explored a new park this morning, a rare bit of quiet.

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
“what does it seem like everyone else is mysteriously bad at? That’s probably a sign that you have good taste there.”

I feel for the owners, but I like the vandalizing woodpecker.

Overhead view of Manhattan looking south, 1931. (via)

Dispatches from my year of classical music.

Why Have Sentence Lengths Decreased?

Music
Paolo Fresu, kind of MILES. Cool jazz covers.

Mark Pritchard, Thom Yorke, Gangsters. “Back in the Game” is just about perfect.

Kuniko, Steve Reich, kuniko plays reich. The steel pans in the first movement of “Electric Counterpoint” was unexpected and completely perfect.

Mandrill. I overheard “Chutney” playing at my go-to burrito place, and had to know what it was. Blues rock, hippie flute jams, west african drumming, they got the whole stew. “Peace and Love (Amani Na Mapenzi) – Movement V (Beginning)” was another fave.

Blanc du Blanc, Scientist, Scientist Meets Blanc du Blanc: Before the Beginning. Trippy reverby headspace dub. See: “Taming Power of the Small: Dance of the Celestial Beings“.

Movies
The Social Network. Still great. Filed under: David Fincher.

Sinners. Overstuffed to its benefit and detriment. A lot to say but I don’t now what it means to say. At its best when leaning into music-video excess and reality-bending. Too many endings!

Flow. Pleasant and kinda boring. Like watching someone play an open-world video game, but more aimless and cloying. Beautiful, though.

Dark City. Second watch, just as good as the first. A weird little masterpiece.

A Poem
“Walk On” by Donna Carnes

You walk on
Still beside me
Eyes shadowed in dusk;
You’re the
Lingering question
At each day’s end.
I have to laugh
At how
Open-ended you remain
Still with me
After all these years
Of being lost.
I carry you like
My own personal
Time Machine,
As I put on my lipstick, smile,
And head out to
The party.

Yesterday we took a day trip to Washington D.C., which is a kind of trip I don’t do often enough. I got the idea when I spotted a new exhibition at the Renwick Gallery, We Gather at the Edge: Contemporary Quilts by Black Women Artists. And so a couple months ago we scheduled a trip to see it, and I was so looking forward to it…

…and I left the building disappointed. I think I’ve long had resistance to political or activist or tribute art. There was plenty here. And I had trouble seeing past it. I remember having the ungenerous though for a few of them, “Why is this a quilt?”. And leaning into my cynicism further, feeling like it was roughly equivalent to, e.g. bronze sculptures of military heroes. I like portraiture, but memorial work, message work, documentary work… not quite as much. So I left there feeling a little deflated. Nothing like the thrills I’d gotten from previous quilt stuff recently.

It’s not fair, but that’s the way it happens sometimes. I walk in with hopes and curiosity and it just doesn’t land. But then we walked across the Mall (passing through huge protest crowds that renewed my faith in America a little bit), and saw some cool stuff at the National Gallery.

Art
Some favorites from yesterday:

• Miss Ruby’s Crown, 2009, an awesome quilt by Gwendolyn Aqui-Brooks.
• From Traditional to Contemporary, 2021, sweetgrass woven basket by Corey Alston.
• Marriage in Form, 1996, a pair of bowls made from Pacific yew by Bob Stocksdale, and hornet’s nest paper by Kay Sekimachi.
• The Return from the Hunt, Flemish tapestry c. 1525-1550, workshop unknown.
• New House in the Suburbs, gouache on canvas by Paul Klee.

Books
Life and Fate, cont.. Enjoying the vignettes but also hoping to find some larger arc to hold on to.

Running
Enjoyed another evening trail run in the middle of the week, and a Friday evening run to fully transition away from the workaday work. I’ve not run with my run club much lately, for accidental reasons. It’s funny how quickly the ties can dissolve if you don’t regular invest in them. I bet when I go back again this week I’ll think, “why did I ever fade out?”

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
“From 1984 to 1988, I worked in the Telephone Reference Division of the Brooklyn Public Library.” (via) When I worked at a public library, reference work was one of the more stressful and satisfying parts of the job, a rollercoaster that could go from “How am I supposed to know?” to “I can’t believe I pulled this off.” in a few minutes.

Good conversations have lots of doorknobs. (via)

“My scheduling principle is to do the thing I hate most on my to-do list. By week’s end, I’m very happy.” (via)

“Business is a lot like the law, in that it doesn’t necessarily work the way you feel it should. It works the way it does whether you like it or not.”

RIP, Val Kilmer. I liked Scout Tafoy’s tribute, and Adam Nayman’s on “a mercurial A-lister who toggled between total immersion and resistance“. In the “if only” category: “My dream is to play Frankenstein with Werner Herzog directing.”

Why domestic prices rise with tariffs.

Music
Deniece Williams, This Is Niecy. ’70s soul, big fan of “Cause You Love Me Baby“. Like Jara said, a great roller-skating song.

Some regional compilations, various artists…

• Qat, Coffee, & Qambus: Raw 45s from Yemen
• Melodii Tuvi: Throat Songs and Folk Tunes of Tuva
• Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll

Two from Terje Rypdal…

• Blue. I love the bass and heaviness in original version of “Last Nite“, whic doesn’t come through as clearly when it soundtracks the balcony scene in Heat. And “I Disremember Quite Well” made me think of The Place Beyond the Pines soundtrack, e.g. “Schenectady“.
• Lux Aeterna, with orchestra and organ. Echoes of Arvo Pärt?

Nils Petter Molvaer with The Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Certainty of Tides. Jazz trumpet and moody strings. I liked it.

12 Ensemble, Metamorphosis.

TV
The X-Files, s4e12 “Leonard Betts”. A headless man eats cancer. Classic.

The Pitt, s1e2.

Severance, s1e9. Clearing the stage for the finale.