Two-day work week last week, and another one coming this week. Highlights of the time off so far: reading breaks, catching up with family, coffee every morning, playing Switch again, morning runs, movies and TV, walks in the neighborhood, "study hall" to learn more coding stuff, making end-of-year charitable donations, and making gumbo for Christmas dinner.

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I vibe-coded a white noise app this weekend. Functionally it's a copy of the most-used features from my previous go-to noise website. But now I can do the same in a dedicated app outside the browser, more finely tailored for how I use it.

The coding itself was very pleasant and absorbing, just me and Codex in the terminal ripping for a couple hours, testing ideas, whittling things down, circling back for a bit of polish. Reached ~1000 lines of good-enough-for-me code, called it a day, started thinking about other problems to solve. Nothing like home cooking.

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I like this idea of "Ins and Outs" to set the tone for the new year. Now pondering what my 2026 should hold, after the examples from Chris Martin and Carl Barenbrug. I think I'll keep these weekly posts on the "In" list.

Art
Really cool online exhibition of Tom Lloyd's work at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Books
War and Peace. So it begins. I'm 150 or so pages into it and while nothing monumental has happened so far, it's been a ton of fun. I think I misconceived the book based on 1) the title and 2) Russian setting and 3) the author, and assumed it would be something more heavy and dour and serious. But it's has a lightness and liveliness that's been really fun to read so far.

Running
Challenging but fun weather this last week: running in sleet one morning, and in a few inches of snow yesterday, with random skids and slides and postholes demanding extra effort and attention. So fun. A great time to insist on regularity, to the extent that I can.

Around the Web
"Capitalism (and now AI) increases the number of trade-offs we face, and therefore increases the importance of meta-preferences—the stories we choose to live inside."

"A book is, we know, an unrivaled technology for living more life."

Does it help to know history? "The real sin that the absence of a historical sense encourages is presentism, in the sense of exaggerating our present problems out of all proportion to those that have previously existed."

"All art galleries are a bit weird eh. Each time you visit, there are a hundred paintings scattered in rooms and you walk through like uh-huh, uh-huh, ok, that’s nice, uh-huh, ok. Then at random one of them skewers you through your soul and you’re transfixed by the image for life."

"So many want the fruit without the root. The glow without the gutting. The revelation without the reverence."

It was only a matter of time: HighAgency.com.

Stimulation Clicker is, sadly, very amusing.

The Story Behind Isamu Noguchi’s Playscapes in Atlanta and Why So Many Control Rooms Were Seafoam Green. (Thanks, Jara.)

Orson Welles on Christmas.

How the White Savior Became This Year’s Cinematic Punchline.

Music
J.S. Bach: The Art of Fugue, perf. Cuarteto Casals. I've never clicked with this work, but yet I persist. String quartet version is novel, at least.

Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, perf. Chris Thile. Mandolin transcriptions are very nice.

Bach: Weihnachtsoratorium / Christmas Oratorio (BWV 248), Thomanerchor Leipzig, Gewandhausorchester cond. George Christoph Biller.

Bach: there's no one better!

Movies
Superman (2025). It's fine. The dog is annoying.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Extended Edition. Better than I remembered. I think the extra footage helped stitch things together better, a bit more heft where we previously skimmed along.

Little Women (1994). Heart: warmed! Loved this movie.

TV
The X-Files, s5e12 "Bad Blood". Vampire shenanigans! Great to see them locked into a silly register, and in a Rashomon-like multiple-perspectives narrative.

Line of Duty, s5e5–6. What a great series. Each is only a handful of episodes each, but hard to think of many that hold the quality bar this high through multiple seasons.

Hannibal, s2e1–2.

At some point I decided to stop being depressed. That might not be scientifically or clinically valid, and it took longer to see it through, but that's about roughly how I experienced it, or at least remember it. I remember immiserating in bed one Saturday morning, spiraling darkly, stagnant. And then a mental sigh, and: "I'm tired of this." I got up. I got dressed. I went for a walk. I felt better when I got back, though not the whole day. The next day I got up and made myself go walk again. I felt better.

It probably wasn't just the walking. Therapy and experience and maturity chipped in, but the walking gave them fresh soil to grow in. Every day, every day, every day: outside.

And then one day earlier this week I realized, "…I... didn't go outside yesterday!". No special reason, just distractedly busy with other things. It had been least 1742 days, along with several years of habit before I started logging it. Annoying to forget, but also: I didn't need it. It's not the life-raft it used to be. Today I'm a different person with different needs, and it's time to give those attention in different ways, new streaks yet to start.

(A nice bookend for how I started the year: remembering when I need to ignore myself.)

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I hate when there's standing water around the house. I always squeegee the shower before I leave. And I hate when pools linger under the dish rack, or on countertops. We have a robo-coffee machine at work and I always dump the drip tray first thing every morning. Then I had a realization where it might come from. This might be a just-so story but I think it makes sense: mosquitos. Life-long nemesis, largely disappeared from daily life, but still shaping my behavior.

Art
Landscape, oil on canvas by Rufino Tamayo. The Shortest Day, book illustrations by Carson Ellis. Cutting the Stone (The Extraction of the Stone of Madness), oil on board by Hieronymus Bosch.

Books
The English and Their History. Still a great read. When we get to newer periods, I'll probably drop and switch to other books. I'm really curious about the ~300–1300CE time period.

Running
Running early before sunrise is a pretty decent replacement for running late at night, which I don't do much anymore. Similar quiet, calm, place-to-your-self feeling. Looks like I'll end the year with around ~950 miles, much less than last year and annoying short of a nice round number.

Around the Web
Growth matters and The only number that really matters.

"When I finish a book, I immediately read the first 10 pages of a new one so I am
never between books."

Why we love Jane Austen more than ever after 250 years. "It was Austen who gave us the perfect art of a socially realistic novel about people having to overcome their inner problems—rather than having to overcome problems imposed upon them by the world."

On Reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Maybe a 2026 project?

Terence Malick's disciples. Always read Bilge Ebiri!

Teenagers need to be free.

Cold cases in the AI era. "The cold case genre delivers a kind of satisfaction more appropriate to the AI era than the cozy mystery genre, first because of the forensic software tech, the genealogy databases, document analysis systems, etc., and second, because audiences want stories about human judgment, about deciding what matters and what does not."

Bad policy leads to ghost apartments.

Music
The Acid, Liminal. There's a bit of kinship here with Thom Yorke's The Eraser in this particular flavor of vocals + electronics mix. "Tumbling Lights", "Ghost", "Red" – all great.

Folk Physics, Parallels.

Bach, Six Sonatas for Organ, BWV 525–530 perf. Aart Bergwerff. I really like this organ, very warm.

Bach: The Toccatas perf. Jonathan Ferrucci.

Movies
The Commuter. Good clean fun. Very happy with how they shot the close-quarters fighting.

The Shop Around the Corner. Takes a while to get momentum but it's a good one. Saw this at Metrograph and remembered that I really really need to go there more often.

TV
The X-Files, s5e1x "Kill Switch". Rogue AI!

Line of Duty, s5e3–4. This show will wind you up and break your heart.

For a team event at work, we went to an axe-throwing place. I was terrible to start, and didn't mind being terrible. Something was off, not my night, oh well. I was happy to throw up bricks, and see if I got better results every few minutes when it was my turn again. Low stakes, low investment. And then I switched to a different hatchet, and suddenly I was consistently thunking metal into board. And success made it fun, and I tried harder. It's okay to blame your tools sometimes?

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I also went to our office holiday party this week, and also my wife's. One comfortably chaotic, because I knew everyone. One intimidatingly elegant, because I didn't. It feels good to dress up every now and then. Wear sweats on the flight if you must, but we should think twice about casualness creeping into every occasion.

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I've been on the search for new washcloths. I really hate the default: thick, soft, fluffy, take weeks to dry. I feel like I'm the only person that likes thin, skritchy-skratchy ones. So anyway I got some hemp scrubbers and they're great.

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Visited the Studio Museum in Harlem today and remembered again how lucky I am to be in a city with so much good creative stuff just a train ride away.

Art
Street Scene with Runners, 1930, gelatin silver print by James Van Der Zee. Wall of Hats, chromogenic color print by Nola Nelson. La Sirène and Her Playmate, metal cut from oil drum by Georges Liautaud. Conjur Woman and the Virgin – Mecklenburg County, collage on masonite by Romare Bearden. The Medici palace frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli.

Books
The English and Their History, by Robert Tombs. Really happy with this so far. I'm a bit concerned it's glossing over the old, old times a little too quickly. Might circle back to other books to add a few more layers there.

Running
Mileage dwindling with the mercury. Had my first run in the snow this morning, a rare treat.

Around the Web
Colors of Growth, a paper on using the colors in European artwork to get insight into economic activity in the past.

DS9 Redefined, "A Loving Restoration and HD Upscale of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine". Yes!

Narrative String Theory. (via)

The New Yorker on the best films of 2025.

Music
Byrd: Three Masses; Taverner: Western Wind Mass perf. King's College Choir, Cambridge Willcocks.

Oklou, choke enough. Pleasant bleeps and bloops and vocals. I like "harvest sky".

Wallners, End of Circles. The title track is really good.

Saya Gray, Saya. Interesting experimental mix of pop, country, folk? "H.B.W" is cool.

The Hilliard Ensemble, Perotin. For all your 13th c. French choral polyphony needs.

-M-, Fatoumata Diawara, Toumani Diabaté, Lamomali, Lamomali Je t'aime. Malian EDM? I like the dark house vibes that "Ama kora" starts with.

Masayoshi Fujita, Smoking Tigers (OST). Gentle, lots of Marimba!

Into the Winds, Le Parfaict Danser: Dance Music 1300–1500. Fun collection, and especially love the cover art – a detail from the south wall of the Magi Chapel.

Movies
Undine (2020).. What a strange little film. Delivers a fantastic scenario in a very straightforward way.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Extended Edition. Still very rewatchable. I think this is my 4th or 5th time seeing it, and I'd be happy to plug in for another half-hour if I stumble on it again. Humans > hobbits > dwarves > elves, for the record.

Silent Night (2023). John Woo action movie. Brutal, and could use a dose of humor here and there, but visually very fun. Love how they make sure you don't miss a thing, even without dialogue.

Wake Up, Dead Man. It's good! Appreciate the earnest religiosity. Took a bit of time to wind up, and lots of moments I think were supposed to be funny (?) didn't land, but still good.

TV
The X-Files, s5e10 "Chinga". Yep, the one with the killer doll.

Line of Duty, s5e2

Last week I wrote thank-you notes to writers whose books I really enjoyed over the last year or so. It's an exercise I started a few years ago. I usually end up sending out a dozen or so. I'll get a handful of messages back, which is cool but very much not the point. Remember: "This will be easier, psychologically, if you don't want to be a writer, don't ask questions, don't need advice, and don't particularly care if you get a response. Spread gratitude, be free!"

Maybe next year I'll extend the same to memorable artists, musicians, moviemakers, etc.?

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This weekend we went to see Les Arts Florissants perform at BAM. The favorite of the night for me was the Messe de minuit pour Noël. I grew up Catholic, so it's easy to recognize all the familiar parts of the mass. I found myself remembering back to old memories of fidgeting in the pews, ready for it all to be over. There was less fidgeting this time (only a little bit – those seats are cramped at Howard Gilman Opera House).

One of the things I love most about early or Renaissance or classical music is imagining what it was like to hear it when it was new. Maybe in a stuffy ballroom, or in a cold, dark church. Orchestras today are often cover bands, so a performance can be a sort of time travel. I think about how even when you're having a great day, a torch song can make you feel love's torment, or an anthem can make you feel boundless, even if nothing around you has changed. Or like this weekend, I can listen and feel humility, reverence, hope. There's something comforting in connection to a tradition that's lasted for hundreds and hundreds of years, even if I'm not part of it in quite the same way these days.

Art
Still Life, oil on canvas by Fernand Léger. Storm in Umbria oil on canvas by Elihu Vedder. Crib quilt, c. 1950s New York. Coupe (footed bowl), earthenware and glaze by Gertrud and Otto Natzler.

Books
Rebecca. This is such a fun book. I'm nestling into the warm embrace of melodrama.

One Long River of Song.

Running
Splitting my weekend long runs into two days more often lately. Call it cowardice or cleverness, it is very exhausting to do the usual mileage in the cold snap we've had.

Around the Web
An eleven-year-old writer's to-do list. Not bad.

Perhaps the best personal gift guide is the one you write for yourself over an extended period.

Move fast because "your work degrades, becomes less relevant with time. And if you work slowly, you will be more likely to stick with your slightly obsolete work." (via)

American AI influencing the language of British legislators.

High Noon (1952): Wait Along, Wait Along…

The Western demands its myth—the one where courage restores the world and a man’s violence is the nation’s virtue—and High Noon offers it only grudgingly. There is no sweeping horizon here; we see only a sliver of prairie. The real action takes place on Hadleyville’s bright, empty streets and on faces flattened by sunlight. The West is emptied of romance, replaced with a collective anxiety that threatens to boil over.

The Quietus albums of the year. Time to start stocking up for 2026 listening.

Music
Wallners, Prolog I. "in my mind" spent a lot of time on repeat.

Rafael Karlen, Sinking Cities, with Camerata, Queensland Chamber Orchestra. Modern choral stuff. "Everything Changes" is pretty good, but the rest didn't have as much staying power for me.

Palestrina: Missa Papae Marcelli | Motets perf. Sistine Chapel Choir cond. Massimo Palombella. "O Bone Iesu" is a little 90-second retreat from all that ails you.

Monteverdi: Vespers 1610 perf. Dunedin Consort dir. John Butt. Love the "Duo Seraphim", sublime.

Movies
n/a, oops!

TV
The X-Files, s5e9 "Schizogeny". Yeah, the one with the killer trees.

All Her Fault, s1e6–8. It gets sillier as you go along.

Line of Duty, s5e1. Here we go again: time to chase down some 👏 bent 👏 coppers.

Sharp Objects, s1e1.

Sex and the City, s1e1–2.

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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

I spent the last two weeks traveling in Japan. The trip started from NYC to Tokyo, then quickly relocated to Osaka for a few days, and to Okayama for a few (day trips to Imbe, Kurashiki, Hiroshima, Naoshima), and then the last few back in Tokyo. Very different from my only other trip there, where I spent most of my time in Tokyo with brief visits to Hakone and Kamakura. I'm going to dump some of my notes I wrote down along the way.

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Fun to feel complete disorientation on first arrival, trusting years of public transit instinct to navigate the first trains. Anything outbound looks good, if not, yolo, we can turn around and try again.

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I forgot how lush Japan is. Damp and green, buildings overtaken by where it's not hemmed in. Mountainsides ready to move downhill if not paved over. Fluid. And decaying. Narita airport is far from the city center, so you pass through a bunch of podunk towns on the way to the megalopolis.

It's also very rugged. When I think "rugged" I usually think "rocks", but here it is hills everywhere, steep forested hills just outside every town. Life squeezed in where it can be. In several places I'd seen baseball fields in the middle of houses, like right next door – nets put up around and above so sport can take place while protecting what's nearby. Just like all the retainment walls on the hillsides or concrete embankments on the rivers. Protect with walls so what's inside can be preserved, or exist in the first place.

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Shinkansen, like Waymo, was utterly mindblowing for the first few minutes and then I quickly took it for granted. But it's amazing that you can just walk up, buy a ticket, walk directly on the train, and 10 minutes later be traveling at 200mph or whatever.

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It's good to have small bits of travel mixed in with the overall trip. An hour or two of calm on a train or bus. Just enough to pull out a book and be in the moment in a different way.

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Learned a lot about celadon pottery, and was especially curious about all the peonies and chyrsanthemums I saw carved in them. Also learned a lot about Bizen ware pottery. So great to have LLMs to ask about what I'm seeing and deep-dive on random questions throughout the trip.

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Washlets/bidets are such a great invention. We should spread these in the States. Even coffee shops have them!

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Interesting to travel and not have all the social cues. Here at home I can glance at someone and have a pretty good sense (confidence, at least, if not accuracy) of where they fit in – nerd, finance pro, Bushwick hipster, "cool" or "uncool", etc.. Not so much there. I can tell when the overlap is obvious – skater chic travels – but plenty of everyday looks I couldn't place.

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I love eSIMs. Data is so cheap, no-brainer for future trips.. I remember my first trip to Japan, I bought a cheap burner flip phone so I could have service and text with a few friends I was meeting up with, and call for basic things that weren't easily internet-able ("open today?"). This was 2007 if I remember right. Using Art Space Tokyo and paper guide I guess, and a map, and a willingness to just be kinda lost or not find things. Different times.

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Averaging ~20,000 steps per day makes for a pretty good lifestyle.

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The towns of Minoo and Imbe made me think about my birth place in rural Georgia. I respond to the familiar, smaller size of each, and the closeness to nature right out the back door. But they also add density, and neighbors, and trains. Best of both worlds? They were like a more ideal form of where I grew up. (Also makes me think of The Goonies or Stand by Me, for example – small town + plenty of friends nearby + plenty of nature for adventure.)

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I have a new appreciation for ukiyo-e prints. I especially like the prominence of ghosts, people sitting in waterfalls, toads, goblins. It's all much more lively and weird than I'd thought.

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The ideal city size is one that's large enough where it's worth having a bike to run errands across town, but small enough where you don't feel a need to brace yourself and armor up to do it.

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As an experiment on this trip, I kept a regret log. Just jotting down poor decisions and 20/20 hindsight to help shape the trip. Among those:

• Not adventuring the first night we arrived, instead letting myself crash and nap too long.
• Not learning much of the language, and having more basic phrases locked in. I felt both rude and helpless during a few basic interactions. I'm smart enough to remember these things, and had plenty of opportunity to prepare.
• Over-relying on the big train stations. It's tempting to navigate to big central stations instead of smaller, less convenient ones. But they tend to be harder to get out of, to navigate through/around, harder to get oriented when you emerge, and a bigger pain to access on foot.
• Not eating enough early enough. I always eat breakfast at home, but let that good habit slip. I like an early start, but coffee and pastry will only last so long, and the extra time for a reasonable meal makes a big difference in how the day plays out.
• Going to the known tourist trap/shopping area just in case it wasn't as bad as I feared. (It was. (It usually is.))

Art
Hatsuhana Praying at Gongen Waterfall, woodblock print by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. Mongaku Shonin Under the Waterfall, woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi.

Books
Crossroads of Twilight.

Breakneck.

Around the Web
"There are going to be a lot of reluctant script executions and heavy button presses in this new era'"

My first months in cyberspace. (via Jason Kottke)

"I find that my life is simplified if, when I’m tempted to have an opinion, I ask myself why I need one, and what I aim to do with it."

Movies
All of these were watched as the creators intended: on am airplane seatback screen with tinny headphones.

Little Shop of Horrors. I had no idea what I was getting into – didn't know it was a musical. Quite a fun one. Levi Stubbs singing as Audrey II seems like a clear bluesy/sleazy ancestor of Oogie Boogie and that crab in Moana. (I wonder if there are earlier examples in this lineage?) Fun to see Steve Martin's precise theatrical choreographed movement (see also the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels training scene).

Tron: Legacy. It's clunky. Interesting set designs, but not as thrilling, visually, as the original. Plot-wise, familiar father-and-son stuff, again not as fresh. Lots of "catch-up" explanations that slow things down. I like some of the religious undertones. Not sure why computer villains would spend time declaiming to vast ranks of soldiers.

Woman of the Hour. A blunt instrument at times, but effectively chilling.

TV
The X-Files, s5e3 "Unusual Suspects". The Lone Gunmen origin story! Richard Belzer playing a square!

Hannibal, s1e2–3. The Abigail Hobbs character is a tough role to play.

Slow Horses, s1e1–3. Slooooow. Vulgar protagonists really annoy me.

The Last of Us, s1e1.