It's amazing how much difference a solid chunk of time can make. A couple days I had frustratingly chopped up calendar – doctor appointment, mid-day transit, meetings on and off every 30 minutes. And on another day: early morning, empty office, nothing on the calendar 'til after lunch. Blank slate for complete thoughts.

Each draining in their own way. Last week I found myself returning home completely flatlined. Enough energy to get out a few sentences but after that: …………. What a weird feeling.

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It's now the Year of the Fire Horse. Fun to read up on my own year's animal and element. It's not for me, but like horoscopes or fortune-telling or other divination, it still scratches that itch where it's inherently compelling to recognize yourself in a description.

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We're set for another blizzard in a few hours, and I find myself wishing for a good ol' fashioned snow day.

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A great Saturday morning: coffee, pastry, and a date at the library.

Art
Fish and Mushrooms, woodcut on paper by Luigi Rist. Oiwa (Oiwa-san), from the series "One Hundred Ghost Tales (Hyaku monogatari)", color woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai – "The title refers to a game in which people would gather at night to tell scary stories, putting out a candle after each tale until the room was completely dark." Large Mowing Machine with Horses, oil on canvas by Jacques Villon. Avatar Reef Teapot, semi porcelain by Delfina Emmanuel. Monkeys on a Fruit Tree, ink and colors on silk hanging scroll by Mori Sosen.

Books
War and Peace. You spend 1000 pages with fictional characters and then Napoleon bursts into the room.

Running
Settling in nicely, somehow my biggest weekly mileage since September. Reminding myself that the short little runs as a daily dose still have huge positive spillover into the rest of my days. Note-to-self, treat exercise like brushing your teeth.

Around the Web
Don't Call It Art!. Pre-ordered! Get on board.

"The other notion of playfulness that I find really useful is from Maria Lugones, the great feminist philosopher, in this beautiful paper called 'Playfulness, World-Traveling, and the Loving Gaze.' She says that playfulness is the ability to move lightly between worlds."

"It's not so much that we need to teach them these things, as much as we need to encourage them to keep believing these things."

Resilient Children, Struggling Parents: Mapping American Parenting. "Using a composite score that measures the extent to which children have independent, playful, socially-diverse, and technology-lite childhoods, we find that kids in the Great Plains, Mountain states, and New England have the highest scores, while a cluster of states around Southern Appalachia are where children have the least independent, least socially-diverse, most technologically-dependent childhoods."

"But needing and being needed—the bottomless empathy and vulnerability they require—are exquisite not because the feeling of love is so special but because the person you love is, to you."

"Science fiction is often called upon to cast a line into the future to plumb the possible consequences of our modern ironies."

"When I’m on set or thinking about a story, making sure that the audience is engaged and that I’m also excited, I have to fight through the sensation of, 'Oh my god, another fucking over-the-shoulder shot.' I have to push through that and go, 'You’re building a sentence. Getting upset when you have to shoot an over-the-shoulder shot is like getting upset at using the word ‘and’ or ‘the’ in a sentence. It has to be done. It’s part of the grammar.'"

A color memory game. I got 44.07/50 on first and only attempt, happy with that. (via)

Women's clothing sizes are a mess.

The Taxonomy of Merch. "Why does wearing merch in real time, in the place it belongs to, feel so icky?" (via)

Cut Gems. The art of retouching photographs of museum gem collections.

I turned my website into my feed reader. Very cool idea. 🤔

The argument for free buses.

"The 'America is behind Europe on trains' narrative compares visibly mediocre service for passengers but ignores invisibly great service for cargo. Instead of asking why America lags Europe on passenger rail, we should be asking ourselves whether America can have better passenger rail and whether it should want to."

Music
A few more from Weval this week (I really enjoyed their self-titled a few weeks ago) a few weeks ago…

• The Weight. Favorite tracks are "The Weight" and "Someday".
• Remember. "Everything Went Well" is a little Washed Out-y, in a good way.
• Chorophobia. I like "Better", especially the bassline.

Monteverdi, Madrigali e lamenti; Madrigali Guerrieri et Amorosi.

Eric Whitacre, Light & Gold. Some really nice choral music. I remember playing one of his pieces back in college (which I did not like very much).

Various Artists, WaJazz: Japanese Jazz Spectacle Vol. I and Vol. II. "Summer Wind" is cool.

Movies
The Rainmaker. Apparently I've seen this before but I didn't remember a thing. Not bad, but not sure it will stick.

Sisu. Second viewing (the first). Holds up! Great warm-up to double-feature with the new sequel…

Sisu: Road to Revenge. Buster Keaton x Fury Road. So fun. For me, the best chases involve some degree of watching and waiting and sneaking around. This delivers.

TV
Dark, s1e7–10. The story has been scifi for a while, but this is the first time we the mechanics rendered on-screen. Loses a bit of mystery and magic that way, and maybe some of the weight?

I love surfing the web. On a long holiday weekend, a perfect way to slosh around and almost-but-not-quite totally waste a few hours. Over the last couple weeks, I've seen more and more posts referencing nostalgia for the Old Web™. If you're over 30 years old, you have a better sense of it. Before the big social platforms, when all the sites were personal or academic, or even the corporate ones that were moderately inept (like the rest of us) and/or experimental. Such a great feeling then, when you caught a good wave. Slipping into the flow and hopping from site to site, finding all the warp portals between the good spaces where you see the best of our collective weirdness. Captured that again for a little while today.

Books
War and Peace. Almost halfway! Some of these people are super messy.

Running
Trying to find a rhythm again.

Around the Web
Why holidays are on Mondays!

"Here’s an idea: Appoint yourself the weekly columnist of whatever your subject is." And the self-appointed artist residency.

"The meta-skill is this: learning to spot what becomes possible when a constraint disappears."

The Origins of One of the Most Beloved Video Games of All Time.

A game(?) that rewards patience.

A Year in Drawings.

Searching for Birds.

Where do parents find the time?. Basically, less sleep and less screen time.

Parents and affordability in New York City.

The World Is Forever Ending.

Music
Choir of New College, Oxford dir. Robert Quinney, Like as the Hart: Music for The Templar's Garden. What a great, great album, all choral interpretations of Psalm 42. Came across it when looking for recordings of Palestrina's "Sicut cervus", itself beautifully done. The real show-stopper for me is Buxtehude's. "Quemadmodum desiederat cervus", BuxWV92. I keep coming back over and over.

Ninajirachi, I Love My Computer.

A couple from Yosi Horikawa, good electronic stuff often with nature sounds, city sounds, field recordings. On Spaces, I like "Crossing". And on Impulse. "Soil" is the winner.

El Jazaah, El Jazaah.

Sabri Brothers, Ya Habib.

Movies
The X-Files. The "will they or won't they" is so agonizing and fun.

Runaway Jury. Legal thriller is an under-rated genre. Seems like we're just not making them as much?

TV
The X-Files, s5e19 "Folie a Deux" and s5e20 "The End". Weird season, on to number six.

Dark, s1e6.

Hmmm. No deep thoughts? Too many long days leading to too many short nights.

Art
Exquisite corpse paintings by Kerry James Marshall. (via). Paper flowers from the Tang dynasty era. Mende artist helmet mask (ndoli jowei). Abdullahi Mohammaed with Mainasara, photo by Pieter Hugo. Face Holding a Leaf, oil on canvas by Léopold Survage. Untitled Donut Drawing, colored pencil with graphite by Judy Chicago.

Books
War and Peace. The wolf hunt is a major highlight so far, tragedy and thrill both in the mix. I love these little interludes / transition moments.

Running
Minimal!

Around the Web
Your free time is for you and How to stop being boring.

Learn about yourself by making something you’ll throw out right away. "It won’t be anything you can’t handle, because you’ve been handling it this whole time."

"The most important change made by an artistic endeavor is the change it makes in you." (via)

"All of these sports make the process of improvement a central point in all of them. And I think that is what makes them cool."

"Athletes possess large quantities of high-value, portable items,” said Nikos Passas, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University, making them appetizing targets for burglars. And because their work schedules are publicly available ahead of time, everyone knows when they won’t be home".

Immigrants have a tremendous net-positive effect.

"One of the arguments for religion is just there’s a place you can stuff your dogmatism into beliefs about the Trinity, and then the rest of you is free to be open minded, because you’ve taken care of your dogmatism. You’ve sent it somewhere where it doesn’t really matter that much for a lot of decisions."

"Motivation is a hired trait. The only place where managers motivate people is in management books."

Music
M. Sage, Tender / Waiting. Reminds me a bit of the Tindersticks soundtrack for Stars at Noon.

Antonio Caldara, Complete Cello Sonatas.

Eberhard Weber, The Colours of Chloë.

Sam Gendel, Nate Mercereau, digi-squires.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Best Urdu Qawwalies. Bangers.

Sunleif Rasumussen: Songs of Solitude perf. Michala Petri, Theatre of Voices, Concerto Copenhagen.

Movies
The Eiger Sanction. A rare DNF. I really like most Clint Eastwood movies I've seen, but this one seemed slow and sophomoric.

Jaws. Masterpiece. "You lose one, you rig one."

OBEX. Reminds me of Mandy a little bit in overall vibe – dreamy hallucinatory reality-blurring. But a lighter, kinder form. But also of Hundreds of Beavers, in black-and-white creativity and constraint.

TV
The X-Files, s5e18 "The Pine Bluff Variant". Mulder undercover!

Dark, s1e3–5. It's growing on me a bit, took a few to get on the wavelength. (And also because I wasn't really paying attention.)

Line of Duty, s6e6–7. This show is over and I'm sad. Favorite all-time? It's up there.

His & Hers, s1e1. Dahlonega mentioned!

We have a whiteboard on our fridge. Most weeks, we update the whiteboard with what's happening that week, along with doodles, quotes, competitive nonsense, bragging rights, etc.. My wife is great about photographing it before we erase and start the new one, and had built a nice historical archive. So I made a photobook of the whiteboards from the last few years.

I'm growing to love digital-to-print projects like this. A while back I made my old Day One iphone journals into a printed book. I've got some ideas for more…

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Had another Friday morning coffee & coworking with some friends. What a treat.

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Felt like a rough work-week even though nothing notably bad happened. I gotta work on ending each day crisply before I crash! It's often better to step away and circle back rather than power through.

Art
A Qing dynasty-era cape embroidered to look like peacock feathers. Broken and Restored Multiplication, oil and silver paper on canvas by Suzanne Duchamp. Outside the Box, quilt by Jenny Voss. Double Still Life, sculptures by Katy Cowan.

Books
War and Peace.

Running
Nursing a minor injury, so I'm using that and the lingering piles of snow as an excuse to recupe.

Around the Web
Isometric NYC.

"Upload an architectural render. Get back what it'll actually look like on a random Tuesday in November."

Map of home values by ZIP code.

Pretty Images Are Dead. Long Live Documentary Photography. "Documentary photography survives because it possesses something AI fundamentally cannot: intent born from witness."

Found cassette tapes.

"Politics is a repeated interaction. If you want politicians to keep doing the useful things, you have to show that useful things earn support."

Five paragraph order.

An archive of mouse pointers. I dislike the latest macOS version rounded off the tip of my mouse pointer. I like it sharp.

The story of the macOS poof animation.

"Stamina is a core bottleneck to work and with LLMs in hand it has been dramatically increased."

"Here’s what using Claude Code initially felt like: cooking with ingredients from a stranger’s fridge."

Everyone is getting syntax highlighting wrong.

Latent space engineering and management as an AI superpower.

Music
Amina Claudine Myers, Song for Mother E. Gospel organ/piano. Love the extended organ opening in "Have Mercy Upon Us".

Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 18; Franck: Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra perf. Alexis Weissenberg, Berliner Philharmoniker cond. Herbert von Karajan. The Rachmaninov is probably a candidate for top-3 or top-5 most-listened-to classical works, always pays dividends. The Franck was in one ear and out the other.

Remscéla, Milkweed. Fuzzy, distorted lofi folk songs based on the Táin saga. See "How Conchobor was Begotten".

Ø, Mika Vainio, Sysivalo. Largely rhythm-less, dark, vaguely-ombinous ambient. I like it! "Etude 4".

Purelink, Faith.

Movies
This Is Not a Film. I respect Panahi's work, and the drive/obsession/risk to put this together but as a viewer, you're mostly watching a guy talk on the phone in his kitchen and it's not the most interesting thing to watch.

Things Will Be Different. Good scifi time travel thriller. Great little world they've invented here. Wonderful sound, too. More movies about siblings!

The Meg. A re-watch. Humor falls flat, and repetitive in the way of many monster movies, but overall decent.

TV
The X-Files, s5e17 "All Souls". I like these religious episodes, and how the writers blend and remix historical materials.

Line of Duty, s6e5. Only two more episodes left of this show, and it's making me sad.

Law & Order, s1e2.

I read (kinda sorta, mostly, sometimes DNF'ed) 31 books in 2025. A drop in total count but I leaned into longer ones a bit more. I think this was a good change overall. Not my best reading year, but the highs were high, and very British!

My top two, call it a tie:

Middlemarch (Eliot). Fictional story of a town in rural England, early 1800s, and its various inhabitants – sons, daughters, doctor, lawyer, mayor, etc. – pursuing their life. Rich and lively, couldn't put it down.

The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV (Castor). Two kings, two cousins. One who wanted all the trappings and ceremony and none of the responsibility of governing. Another who wanted the burden (and power), and took it, and learned the costs. It's a cliché but some books really do make the figures "come alive".

Other great ones from the year:

• Rainbows End (Vinge). Scifi thriller with augmented reality and wearable tech and dementia cures.
• Extinction (Preston). Jurassic Park, but detectives and Neanderthals.
• On the Calculation of Volume, Book 1 (Balle). Novel of philosophical Groundhog Day time repetition.
• Sense and Sensibility (Austen). Two daughters find their way to love!
• The English and Their History (Tombs). Exactly what it says on the tin, but just the right balance of momentum and detail.

Interesting moment to the visit the doctor this week. A routine visit, fill out forms, take some blood, quiet typing and clicking, off you go. But ambient stress from a frustrated patient, at wit's end, nearby at the reception desk seeped in for a few moments. It's such a vulnerable space.

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On Friday, we had friends over for coffee and breakfast and early morning chit-chat. And since we all have cushy tech-worker jobs, transitioned into a communal work-from-home session for an hour or so before parting ways. I'm patting myself on the back for the novelty. We (bozos with no children or other practical obstacles) should do this more often. It's good to prioritize something wholesome and rewarding early in your day. (Having guests was also a helpful nudge to tidy up after moving a bunch of furniture around.)

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Yesterday evening we spent some time doing some artwork, making collage masks from paper cutouts. It felt so refreshing to do something instinctual, following reflexes, running with the first idea that seemed good enough. Such a change from my usual day-to-day work, which usually requires thoughtful precision every single time. Safe spaces+++.

Books
War and Peace, cont.. Mildly regretting my choice to go with the completely-unabridged version. Humbling to be at page 640-something and only ~33% done. I enjoy the companionship of this book, though.

Running
A down week in mileage, but lucky to have two snowy trail runs in the mix. Tied my coldest run ever, out at 12° as today's winter storm laid down its first couple inches. This week's weights session was a good reminder that I should lift more often.

Around the Web
Playful children’s drawings become colorful handmade chairs. (via)

Moss and Mondrian, a nice snippet on mutual influence and how history gets simplified.

"If by any chance you are wondering how to make yourself smarter, learn how to appreciate almost everybody, and keep on cultivating that skill."

"A much more reliable way to stay offline is just to be doing things so engaging that it wouldn’t occur to you to drift online in the first place." (via)

Cover your 25 miles, then rest up.

The best way to read the internet. Amen. You'll have to take my RSS feeds from my cold, dead hands.

"You're building an anxiety management system that happens to look like productivity."

The Etymology of English Colours and How 'guacamole' is related to 'avocado' and 'mole'.

Japanese death poems.

Now that my storehouse
has burned down, nothing
conceals the moon.

Don't waste your back pressure.

"Design and planning becomes the bottleneck when agents write all the code".

Music
The South Hill Experiment, MOONSHOTS. There's some fuzzy psychedelic folk rock but also some groovy stuff. Had a lot of fun with this one. See "Gabo's Last Resort".

Weval, Weval. A theory: electronic duos are consistently better than solo acts. I like "Square People" and
"Days".

Claudio Monteverdi – Madrigali e lamenti, Montserrat Figueras and La Capella Reial de Catalunya dir. Jordi Savall. "Lamento della ninfa" is a standout. Also realizing that I've gotten much more into "early music" in the last year or so. Mostly at random/opportunistically, but I think there's room for a more serious, intentional dive.

(Usually a good sign when I keep albums around for another week, like these first three.)

Seun Kuti, Egypt 80, Heavier Yet (Lays the Crownless Head). Afrobeat will never die.

Lee "Scratch" Perry, Bob Riddim, Destiny. Dub/ska/reggae. Such a beautiful voice! "Ring Pon My Finger" and "Infinity (Dub)".

Brittney Carter, As I Am. Rap. Don't lvoe it, don't hate it. The interludes kill me, but I like the drum work in "Running".

Charles LLoyd, Zakir Hussain, Eric Harland, Sangam. Indian/jazz fusion jam session meanderings. I couldn't get into it.

Movies
The Da Vinci Code. Second view (the first). After a long day I needed some smooth-brain entertainment and it delivered. Two+ hours of non-stop conspiracy theory. I wonder if there's any good writing about this movie/franchise paving the way for 21c social distrust.

The Mastermind. A dope robs a museum, reaps the consequences. Filed under Kelly Reichardt, one of the most consistently excellent directors today.

Finding 'Ohana. Light family-forward adventure in the spirit of The Goonies. Owes a debt, mostly pays it.

TV
The X-Files, s5e16 "Mind's Eye". This season is getting confusing now. I'm not sure where anyone stands, and I'm not sure that's intentional.

Law & Order: UK, s1e1. Everything instantly recognizable and slightly "off". It delivers.

Dark, s1e1–2.

Line of Duty, s6e3–4. Is this my all-time favorite show?

I watched 127 movies in 2025, on par with last year. Of the first-time viewings, these are the ones I'd be most happy to watch again. Just like my write-up of movie favorites from 2024, I'll excerpt previous posts for the best of the best. Listed chronologically, in both the tippy-top-tier and the contenders. What I see in common for the top four is a compassionate, affirming spirit – whether that in new friendships, on the job, in love, in family and community.

Tampopo.

A stranger rides into town and helps a woman with her struggling noodle shop. The feeling may fade a bit with time, but right now I’m in love with this movie. Such a big heart. And expansive enough that the main plot is interspersed with vignettes with unrelated characters, snapshots of a world beyond, full of concerns and worries and dreams just like our own.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.

Now this is a movie! Dudes being dudes.

Compensation.

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.

Little Women (1994).

Heart: warmed!

Honorable mentions, really can't go wrong:

• Rebel Ridge
• Nosferatu (2024)
• Love & Basketball
• Da 5 Bloods
• Sisu
• Speak No Evil (2022)
• Elevation
• The Clock (1945)
• Sinners
• Practical Magic
• The Order
• Timecrimes
• The Princess Diaries
• 28 Years Later
• Tron
• Woman of the Hour
• Black Bag
• Train Dreams
• Silent Night (2023)

Started my long weekend with a bit of journaling, now I sit by the big window watching the snow fall. Life is good.

Art
La Cadie Diaspora, mixed media textiles, stencil, collage, embroidery, stiching by Merill Comeau. Embers, quilt by Barbara Danzi. Thar, sculpture in porcelain, earthenware, glaze by Kathy Butterly. The Boating Party, oil on Canvas by Mary Cassatt. Paysans Sortant et Allant au Marché (Villagers Going to the Market), oil on board by Philomé Obin. Trains and Bridges, lithograph in black on wove paper by Jolán Gross-Bettelheim.

Books
War and Peace, continued.

Running
Running trails in the earliest morning light, just before dawn, is such a perfect gift before starting the workday. Red Hook again this weekend, will take one more run to complete the map. Maybe next weekend, though I don't love the idea of hitting the same area three weekends in a row. We'll see.

Around the Web
This weekend I learned the phrase "haud yer weesht ", via Line of Duty. (Who else but Hastings?)

"The most virtuous thing is usually to make an up-front investment in making things easier, so that going forward, you are not making high day-to-day expenditures of your patience, energy or happiness."

How the Brooklyn Bridge has changed over time. I had no idea the bridge had trolley cars at one point.

The real reason New Yorkers' groceries cost so much. Zoning strikes again! Expensive elevators strike again!

Where Americans Choose to Move and Where They Leave. Interesting to see some family trajectories mapped out here. "From 2020 to 2024, 1.47 million more people moved from California to elsewhere in the United States than from a different state into California. That outflow is equal to 3.7% of the state’s 2020 population." Time to buy low?

A finding that "Living next door to someone as a child increases the probability of having the same occupation as them 30 years later by about 10 percent." (via)

The United States needs fewer bus stops …and better (faster) service as a result.

Oops, You Wrote a Database.

Music
Yosi Horikawa, Vapor. Had this album on repeat throughout the week. I love all the nature sounds mixed into bouncy, juicy, lush electronic stuff. Two faves: "Maki" and "Summer in 1987".

Tako Tiki, Hirsutes Farfelus. Oddball winds + percussion.

The Platters, The Flying Platters Around the World. I really like "Twilight Time".

Titanic, Vidrio and HAGEN. How to summarize these – Latin experimental chamber pop?

Philip Glass, Etude No. 1 → No. 8 perf. Vanessa Wagner. What you'd expect!

Donnacha Dennehy: Land of Winter perf. Alarm Will Sound cond. Alan Pierson. Months of the year in chamber form. I liked this recording. "November" is the best, of course!

Movies
Girls Town. Close friends, soon to leave high school, navigate shared tragedies. It's very sweet and sad and funny. Two thumbs up.

Wolf Man (2025). Got exactly what I signed up for. Fun movie. Love that we see the early hints of transformation in the heigtened senses – smell, hearing. The sound design is especially good, as we take on the perspective of the protagonist. Early tragedy in the simple distancing from inability to communicate what he's going through. Appreciate the novelty of the precarious greenhouse sheeting – take full advantage of your setting!

The Fate of the Furious. I've seen a lot of individual scenes before, but for the life of me I cannot tell you how or when. The spectacle is dialed in. The writing is bad. I don't think I'd intentionally rewatch again. Vin Diesel wears the mythologizing well, but the Statham scenes easy eclipse everyone else in the cast.

TV
The X-Files, s5e15 "Travelers". Body horror!

The Abandons, s1e1.

Hannibal, s2e12–13. Such a perfect and devastating season wrap-up. "In the pantry!".

Line of Duty, s6e1–2. I care about one thing and one thing only!

Last week was my first full week back to work, post-holidays. I was surprisingly at peace on Sunday night, ready and accepting that it was time to get back to reality. Sometimes vacations can feel too short; sometimes, too long. Felt like this one was dialed-in.

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Lately I feel like I have more space in my weekends somehow. Something has shifted. It's like there's just 2–4 hours that weren't there before. I'm not sure how it appeared.

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Took my first ride on the NYC Ferry this weekend, up the East River from Brooklyn to Queens and over to Manhattan. So pleasant!

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Late last year I spent way too much time window-shopping for a new keyboard. It was an intense relief to finally buy one. Shopping can be a thrill and a vast emptiness.

Art
Pink Honey, acrylic, pencil and ink on burned paper by Modupeola Fadugba. The Waterfall, oil on canvas by Henri Rousseau. Fireflies, woodblock print by Tsukioka Kōgyo. Garland of Fruit surrounding a Depiction of Cybele Receiving Gifts from Personifications of the Four Seasons, oil on panel by Hendrick van Balen the Elder and Jan Brueghel the Elder. Cleaning Jesus, gelatin silver print by Walter Martin

Books
War and Peace, cont.. Hit a bit of a rut this week. Whether chicken or egg, it coincided with losing my earlier consistency.

Running
Just a few more miles and I can add the Red Hook neighborhood to my ran-every-street list. Got back to a longer run this weekend, aided by warmer weather. Above 35–40º, it gets much, much easier to manage a run over a longer period of time. Fewer garments to manage, lower downside risk if you mismanage ventilation or layering, etc.. And drinks stay warm.

Around the Web
The life of a fangirl. "Fandoms create environments where participation happens almost always naturally and almost always horizontally."

The Case for Blogging in the Ruins. "The blog, at its best (a best I aspire one day to reach) is Montaigne's direct descendant. It's a form that allows for intellectual exploration without demanding premature certainty. You can write a post working through an idea, acknowledge in the post itself that you're not sure where you'll end up, and invite readers to think alongside you."

Against access. "Our environment has endless potential for life. For centuries, however, much of our vitality was forbidden. We were forced to stick with the effects of the hearing and sighted world. Now, though, we are all in varying stages of flight." How accessibility (in a common understanding of an "us" making the world easier for a "them") falls short, with particular focus on ASL interpreters. Very interesting!

DeafBlind people are creating a new language. An PBS intro to ProTactile, which I learned about from the article above. It looks beautiful and fun!

The loneliness crisis isn't just male. "What our polling reveals, though, is that it’s a youth loneliness crisis, rather than a male loneliness crisis. Age, not gender, shows far greater correlation with antisocial attitudes and beliefs. Younger voters — both male and female — are increasingly paralyzed by anxiety and fear, and they are finding it harder and harder to socialize. In fact, when you look at the data, the 'antisocial crisis,' as I like to call it, is actually most pronounced among young women, who experience the highest rates of social isolation."

"One of the most underappreciated things about the recent past washow common boredom was."

The philosophy of Solvej Balle.

It's hard to justify Tahoe icons.

How Markdown took over the world.

What an unprocessed photo looks like.

Are You Enjoying Our Linguine?: How American tourists took over everything. "They feel challenged. They feel alive. They are Americans. They are frontier people. They love a cultural mystery."

Notes on Afghanistan.

Mamdani moderating – high hopes!

Music
Netherwalker, Odyssey of Respair. Guttural screamy metal with some classical grandiosity.

Beethoven: Sonatas 18, 27, 28, 31 (The Lost Tapes / Live) perf. Sviatoslav Richter.

Funkadelic, Maggot Brain. I really like the title track. Interesting to hear this transition in music history – borrowing from blues, gospel, psychedelic rock, blending it all up and leaving nothing out.

Charlie Hunter, Ella Feingold, Different Strokes for Different Folks. Bluesy, funky guitar + bass + percussion. "Nasty, Ain't it!?".

Bill Evans Trio, Haunted Heart: The Legendary Riverside Studio Recordings. Just really good start to finish. A favorite moment this week was a pre-dawn run in Prospect Park with this album playing. Magical.

Charles Lloyd, Figure in Blue.

SML, How You Been.

Movies
45365. Documentary of people in a place (Sidney, Ohio). If you like this sort of "snapshots of everyday life around town" documentary – I really do – check out Hale County This Morning, This Evening.

City of Gold (2015). Follows along with food critic Jonathan Gold as he explores LA food, and with other talking heads about his impact on food writing, etc.. At its best when its attention is on the city.

Fragments for Venus (short). Straightforward description and juxtaposition – sometimes the basic ingredients are the most potent.

Tron: Ares. Gorgeous to look at, and I think a larger screen would shift my opinion a bit, but all the dazzle in the world cannot save a leaden script, delivered flatly. Interesting to see Minecraft-life voxel cube material when techno-things disintegrate – very similar presentation in Superman (2025) with the reality rift thing.

TV
The X-Files, s5e14 "The Red and the Black". I dunno, is this going anywhere?

Hannibal, s2e9–11. This is going somewhere!

Lost LA, s1e1–3. PBS!

And so the last chunk of holiday break comes to a close. A few highlights: Sunday morning walk to a cafe to read, and then to a diner. A brief return to the office for a couple of days, and blasting country music all afternoon on Tuesday. Making red beans & rice on New Year's Eve. Re-arranging the furniture and refreshing the apartment for another year. Playing Breath of the Wild for too long. Visiting a new coffee shop. Date night dancing to music videos. The usual early wake-ups feeling even earlier in a quieter city.

Art
Openings, Red Rock Variation: Lake Superior Landscape, acrylic on canvas on board by George Morrison. Man and Newspapers in Grass, Central Park, gelatin silver print by Tod Papageorge. Vokeo Island Lewa mask in wood and varnish.

Books
War and Peace. I feel a bit of wind going out of my sails during the battle scenes. They are beautifully written and fresh, but right now I'd like to get back to salon drama.

Running
I really like running in the snow. Such fun. There's often the nervousness the night before when the temps hit a new low, the shock of the cold on the first steps out the door, the sluggish pulse and shortness of breath, but then on warming up: bliss.

Around the Web
2026: "We’ve officially landed in the “made up years” era, where the years don’t feel real, rather, opening lines for a YA doomsday sci-fi book." Let's try that again. This year is our year. Only 12 months until the late 2020's.

"When there's no meaningful resistance, is there any real transformation?"

"A thick desire is one that changes you in the process of pursuing it. A thin desire is one that doesn't." (via)

"Luckily because of the way I began, I’m the cockroach of this industry. I can survive any version of it."

It's cool how many different cultures have some form of psychopomp in their stories of the afterlife.

"A question no writer wants to raise in a reader’s mind is ‘why are you telling me this?’"

"It is more important to see the stories in ourselves than to see ourselves in the stories."

"Everyone's house looks like a dentists office now" and Merchandising the Void.

"Doomerism assumes you can opt out and hold your position. That refusal is neutral. That the world will wait while you decide. It won’t."

53 Directors Pick Their Favorite Films of 2025.

Paper Jewels: Postcards from the Raj.

On the creativity of videogame pixel art made for CRT displays.

"You can take a barbell strategy to travel. Either go for a year, or two, or ten, however long you need to go to open a bank account. Or, stay no longer than a few days in the same place, and come back often. The world is changing, and […] there will be combinations of place and time lost to us forever."

"Why aren’t there more intermediate options between eating in a sit-down restaurant, and cooking your own meals? […] There is a magical place with plentiful such options, and it’s called Taiwan."

Music
Le grand embrasement: Music for a Mad King perf. Into the Winds. Bouncy, festive olde musicke. I really liked it.

Chopin: The Complete Nocturnes perf. Tom Hicks. They're all lovely but I have trouble staying inside the music. Attention drifts.

Shostakovich: The Piano Concertos; Solo Works perf. Yuja Wang, Boston Symphony Orchestra cond. Andris Nelsons. The Andante from the second concerto is brilliant. The rest, familiar and didn't capture me.

Freddie Roulette, Spirit of Steel. Slide guitar, mostly bluesy, sometimes Hawaiian-tinged. I liked "Song for My Father".

LTJ Bukem presents Earth, Vol. 1, good compilation of various drum & bass. This music used to grate but I think I'm better at hearing past the drum chatter now. "Faith" makes me think of Pilotwings 64 (complimentary).

Movies
Hercules (1997). I don't love it, but I think we can all relate to Hades' mood swings. Read up on the first 15 minutes.

Tenet. Third time I've seen it? Steadily growing on me. Each time I watch I find something new.

Presence. First movie of 2026. A ghost moves through an empty house as we see through its eyes, and a family moves in, and they learn about each other. Director Steven Soderbergh: "The beauty of projects at this scale is I can just do them without having to talk to anybody." Another quality Soderbergh I saw recently is Black Bag.

Grand Theft Hamlet. Actors out of work during the pandemic decide to stage a play in the videogame world of Grand Theft Auto. It's funny, crazy ambitious, and has a few touching moments. Quality documentary!

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Extended Edition. "Forth, and fear no darkness!"

TV
The X-Files, s5e13 "Patient X". Back on the season arc. Fox Mulder has lost his mojo!

Hannibal, s2e4–8. Will Graham has regained his mojo!

Land of Sin, s1e1. Every country has its rednecks.