I read Kim Kardashian West’s book Selfish, and can’t help but like her more. (I’ve never watched the TV shows, and only know the bare sketches of her bio and place in culture at the moment.) I think any book of portraits of just one subject would have a similar effect. Just another human gettin’ by.
Haven’t seen the whole fireside chat, but had to dig up the source when came across this great Jeff Bezos wisdom around 4.5 minutes in, on anticipating future business needs:
I very frequently get the question, “What’s going to change in the next ten years?” And that is a very interesting question. It’s a very common one. I almost never get the question, “What’s not going to change in the next ten years?” And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two. Because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices. And I know that’s going to be true ten years from now. They want fast delivery. They want vast selection. It’s impossible to imagine a future ten years from now where a customer comes up and says, “Jeff, I love Amazon. I just wish the prices were a little higher”. “I love Amazon. I just wish you’d deliver a little more slowly.” Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up… we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers ten years from now. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.
When it’s time to get dressed in the morning, I don’t throw myself into a giant room full of clothes. I pull socks from my sock drawer and shirts from my shirt drawer. I’ve been doing this since I was five years old. It’s not a challenge.
I read Koji Kondo’s Super Mario Bros. Soundtrack and had felt many feelings. Overall a bit dry and academic. If you were obsessed with games of the era (I’m guilty), you probably know too much industry history to find anything new here in the first half, and you’re already sold on the cultural import. The second half focuses more on the music itself, and digs into music theory a bit more… but if you know a good bit about music already, it also feels like… just not enough. It still made me very nostalgic, though, and for a while I convinced myself I need to buy a Wii U or something.
Drive. Third viewing. That elevator scene is still top notch. I’m a sucker for any movie that suspends time to drift into a moment just because. Oscar Isaac has some of the best casual menace in the game right now. Filed under: Drive.
Magic Mike XXL. My appreciation for it grows as time passes. It’s more aimless than the first one (which I really liked), and I think that “this isn’t gonna be like last time” shift is pretty obvious right away with the “Pony” solo. This one seems more gentle and… appreciative? Everybody learned some lessons over the years since the last one. Now it’s time to celebrate, honor that time, and move on. It’s a shame their crew only has like 1.5 decent dancers, but it kinda works. I really enjoyed KameronHurley’sseriesoftweetsaboutthe movie, which had me shouting in agreement. Filed under: Magic Mike.
Team America: World Police. A mixed bag. Some brilliant satire and some painfully juvenile stuff. Interesting to see things that were casually fun back then that just won’t fly today.
Three Colors: White. Second in the Three Colors trilogy. A dark and funny revenge (?) tale, with a little bit of shaggy dog thing going on. Another thumbs-up from me. I like when movies lull you into getting invested in a terrible protagonist.
Three Colors: Blue. On grief (+ separating yourself from it) and human connection (+ separating yourself from it). I dig it. It doesn’t play like a weepy melodrama because our lead is in such a shambles, she’s unpredictable and hard to read. Never gonna argue with a Binoche movie. This is the first I watched from the Three Colors trilogy.
I read a quarter of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train, and bailed. I’m pretty sure I won’t finish, anyway. Might grab it again later to make sure I’m not missing out. For now, on to the next.
Rationally, no one should be happier about a score of 96 out of 137 (70 percent) than 72 out of 100, but my students were. And by realizing this, I was able to set the kind of exam I wanted but still keep the students from grumbling.
To pluck some things from the list, while ignoring others, strikes many Buddhists as absurd. McMahan said, “It would be as if somebody went to the Catholic Church and said, ‘I don’t buy all this stuff about Jesus and God, but I really dig this Communion ritual. Would you just teach me how to do that bit? Oh, and I want to start a company marketing wafers.’
Viktor & Rolf, Couture, AW15, Paris. In a show that saw artworks exploding off the wall to form couture gowns, Viktor and Rolf created garments that exaggerated the balancing acts that lie at the heart of all clothing. On everyday clothing, common pattern shapes are regurgitated so that designers don’t have to deal with pesky things like gravity. However, once materials become harder, heavier or stiffer the ability to shape and control the structure of a garment to form extreme silhouettes becomes more and more important. Keep reading
“You’re about to get an exclusive here,” Bonner said. “I hate to make excuses, I was raised to never make excuses, but I went through a two-and-a-half month stretch where I had really bad tennis elbow, and during that stretch it made it so painful for me to shoot I’d almost be cringing before I even caught the ball like, ‘Oh, this is going to kill.’ ” […] “Everybody is going to find this hilarious, but here’s my theory on how I got it,” he said. “When the new iPhone came out it was way bigger than the last one, and I think because I got that new phone it was a strain to use it, you have to stretch further to hit the buttons, and I honestly think that’s how I ended up developing it.”
Blackhat. Some really cool moments and scenes, but a bit underwhelmed the second time around. (The first.) Updated Michael Mann rankings:
I read Kim Kardashian West’s book Selfish, and can’t help but like her more. (I’ve never watched the TV shows, and only know the bare sketches of her bio and place in culture at the moment.) I think any book of portraits of just one subject would have a similar effect. Just another human gettin’ by.
I read Koji Kondo’s Super Mario Bros. Soundtrack and had felt many feelings. Overall a bit dry and academic. If you were obsessed with games of the era (I’m guilty), you probably know too much industry history to find anything new here in the first half, and you’re already sold on the cultural import. The second half focuses more on the music itself, and digs into music theory a bit more… but if you know a good bit about music already, it also feels like… just not enough. It still made me very nostalgic, though, and for a while I convinced myself I need to buy a Wii U or something.
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Gotta admit I didn’t follow this one very well. I liked it, though.
Magic Mike XXL. My appreciation for it grows as time passes. It’s more aimless than the first one (which I really liked), and I think that “this isn’t gonna be like last time” shift is pretty obvious right away with the “Pony” solo. This one seems more gentle and… appreciative? Everybody learned some lessons over the years since the last one. Now it’s time to celebrate, honor that time, and move on. It’s a shame their crew only has like 1.5 decent dancers, but it kinda works. I really enjoyed Kameron Hurley’s series of tweets about the movie, which had me shouting in agreement. Filed under: Magic Mike.
Team America: World Police. A mixed bag. Some brilliant satire and some painfully juvenile stuff. Interesting to see things that were casually fun back then that just won’t fly today.
Three Colors: White. Second in the Three Colors trilogy. A dark and funny revenge (?) tale, with a little bit of shaggy dog thing going on. Another thumbs-up from me. I like when movies lull you into getting invested in a terrible protagonist.
Three Colors: Blue. On grief (+ separating yourself from it) and human connection (+ separating yourself from it). I dig it. It doesn’t play like a weepy melodrama because our lead is in such a shambles, she’s unpredictable and hard to read. Never gonna argue with a Binoche movie. This is the first I watched from the Three Colors trilogy.
I read a quarter of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train, and bailed. I’m pretty sure I won’t finish, anyway. Might grab it again later to make sure I’m not missing out. For now, on to the next.