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.

Did my taxes last week, a capstone on an other wise perfect Sunday: awake early, reading and writing in bed for a bit, morning walk, personal admin, afternoon run, pizza, movie, nap, dinner, reading until bedtime.

I got audited by ChatGPT this week, now that it has ability to remember and consider previous chats. I played with a few questions I've seen floating around:

• Describe me based on all our chats – play it straight.
• (necessary follow-up when LLM was trying to butter me up:) I don't see much criticism there. Feels like you're soft-pedaling a bit…?
• Based on everything I’ve ever asked you, what do you think my biggest blind spots are?

I got the kind of accurate criticism that makes you squirm but where you also quickly 'fess up to it – embarrassed laughter, easy recognition of my best and worst.

Art
Yesterday after visiting a new diner, we went to see Amy Sherald: American Sublime at the Whitney. I'd previously seen her work collected at Spelman Museum in Atlanta and a couple years later at Hauser & Wirth in LA. I don't know many other artists where I've been able to revisit the work in person over a few years, and see them refine and iterate and grow during my actual lifetime.

A Universe of One, 2018, collage, watercolor, and charcoal on canvas by María Berrío.

I signed up for a two-day weaving workshop at the Textile Arts Center next month. It's been a consistent interest for a few years, just as an appreciator of the craft. Can't wait to get hands-on and learn more. I've also been taking more photos lately. I have no method or philosophy that I know of. I just like trying to capture things that might look interesting? And that's enough for me right now – feels good to be a carefree dabbler.

Books
Bright Young Women. Re-visited, found my way in.

Running
Really enjoying my early evening runs before dinnertime. And this morning I had best run-walk ever, wife by my side, cold breeze, warm sun, flowering trees in bloom. Perfect start to the day.

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
I've been off Twitter for a couple weeks now, and generally drew back from online inputs this week. I'm liking this change. I'll be back later I'm sure.

"i think creative people ramp up when they lean into their pretentiousness. creativity is supposed to let you be someone you're not (but aspire to). admit that beauty moves you, that footnotes excite you, that you think art matters. 'I do have taste and i'm not ashamed of it.'"

Music
Vega Trails, Sierra Tracks. Folk/chamber music – double-bass and saxophone and drums and orchestra – that would be perfect for a soundtrack. Probably my favorite of the week. I like "Murmurations".

Or maybe it was John Carroll Kirby, Septet? Tightly-written jazz with a bit of funk exocita. Dig the bookends, "Rainmaker" and "Nucleo".

Abercrombie, Hammer, DeJohnette, Timeless. A bit more jam-jazz than I typically respond to. I like "Red and Orange", though.

Terje Rypdal, Chaser. Is this easy listening? Or a predecessor? "Once Upon a Time" typifies the spacy, jazzy, noodly vibe.

Eberhard Weber, Endless Days. Jazz bass, didn't stick with me.

Elliott Carter, Orchestral Songs & Choral Works.

Laura Cannell, "Wake the Slumbering Lyre".

Movies
The Clock (1945). Charming. Strangers meet in NYC, have some adventures, fall in love. I love the willingness to let linger on their faces. The elation when they found each other at the train station! It will probably make my end-of-year lists.

Dawn of the Dead (2004). Pretty good! You got your reliable people, you got your flakes, you got your bad decisions, you got your relentless zombies. I don't need the body horror stuff, but the dread and close calls are dialed-in.

Small Things Like These. Gentle, heavy, dark, hopeful. Powerfully acted without being loudly acted.

TV
The X-Files, s4e14 "Memento Mori". Very worried about whatever deal was made with the Cigarette-Smoking Man.

This was an exhausting week at work, and that sort of vacuumed up all the energy I might have put elsewhere. Took on some work in a new area, straight to the deep end, trying to absorb context on the fly. Add in our usual backlog and a critical incident or three, and poof, the workdays fly right by… and continued into the night a few times. It's nice to know that, when needed, I can just crank out a 12-hour day and come back for another one. People are resilient!

This week I also had a last-minute hang with a friend in town, one I hadn't seen in a couple years. A huge and immediate boost. Highlight of the week.

Art
Starry Night and the Astronauts (1972), acrylic on canvas by Alma Thomas.

The People’s Bank Shortly Before the Crash (1877), oil on canvas by Christian Ludwig Bokelmann.

Reflection #2 (1959), tapestry by Kay Sekimachi in plain-woven linen, cotton, and rayon.

Books
Life and Fate. Feels like I'm losing my grip on this book. Found myself skimming over, rushing through, attention drifting.

Bright Young Women (Knoll). A little bit of trashy killer thriller to liven things up. I think this will end up as DNF.

Running
One of the things that fell by the wayside this week. I did return to run club yesterday for a rainy 38° run over the Brooklyn and Williamsburg bridges. A familiar route, but made sure to liven things up for myself with a couple detours. Needed that dose of selfishness.

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
"The idea that nastiness and negative affect are going to win the day strikes me as a lazy tactic that people reach for because they lack creativity and skill."

Patrick Collison on what Europe and the U.S. each excel at. I've only spent a couple months in Europe (at most), but it has the ring of truth.

Read to live, live to read. (via)

Middle-aged man trading cards.

"And the days are not full enough", poem by Ezra Pound.

Music
Freddie Jackson, Rock Me Tonight. Another r&banger that I heard my local grocery store: "Rock Me Tonight for Old Times Sake".

Jon Hopkins, Singularity. This one rips. See "Emerald Rush" and "Everything Connected".

Jon Hopkins, Music for Psychedelic Therapy. On the lighter, wispier side of electronic vs. the pulsing EDM flavor of the previous.

Harms Way, Posthuman. Metal. "The Gift" is easily the least like the others, but I like it's nightmare-ish basement-of-horrors energy.

Movies
West Side Story. The first and only time I saw was when I was a kid, must have been elementary or middle school. I also played the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story orchestra suite in college. So it was fun to revisit a story I barely remember set to music I know really, really well. The brownface and accents are rough, but it's still a pretty lovely movie.

The Sacrament. Inspired by events at Jonestown. Gene Jones gives a tremendous performance. The rest of the movie, I could take or leave. The wikipedia is haunting enough on its own.

TV
The X-Files, s4e13 "Never Again". Scully wrestles with her inner demons by getting a tattoo.

Bosch, s1e3-4.

Severance, s2e10. Finale! I don't need another season, but I'd 100% tune in if we get one.

Abbott Elementary, s4e18. One of the funnier episodes I remember.

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.

This sentence aside, I find myself in a less reflective mood lately. A few highlights this week:

• Working from home on Tuesday just because, and going for an early evening trail run
• Knowing exactly what I need to do and getting into The Zone™ to crank it out
• Recognizing when my brain was toast after a few long days, letting go of my usual instinct to resist, and just going to bed at 915pm
• Appreciating the different joys that are available when I'm solo vs. when I'm not
• Touring a new arts center at their open house and imagining myself there for future shows
• Understanding new coffee beans well enough to get what I want out of them

Art
Mother and Daughter at Penn Station, NYC, photo by Ruth Orkin. Ma Vie En Rose, hand-stitched silk collage by Billie Zangewa. Female figurine from Guerrero, Mexico, ~1500–500 BC, made of earthenware with pigment decoration in the Xochipala style.

Books
The Modern Myths. DNF. I didn't expect this, but I think I wanted more essay-like editorializing/theorizing, and fewer academic analyses of other examples? Not bad, though.

My Brilliant Friend. DNF. Kind of amazing in its compulsive readability, very colorful, but I never felt like it was adding up to anything. I wonder if I'd feel differently with older protagonists.

Life and Fate. Enveloping so far. Might be my next Big Book™ for the year.

Finally got around to renewing my library card, so now I have Libby access again if this one falls by the wayside.

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
"Around a dozen members is the sweet spot of social motivation: small enough to know everyone, yet large enough that the group won’t collapse if one or two members’ enthusiasm wanes; small enough that you are not daunted by competing with the whole world, yet large enough that you still need to be on your toes to keep up." (via)

"Don't end the week with nothing. Prefer to work on things you can show. Prefer to work where people can see you. Prefer to work on things you can own." (via)

"If you are blaming people for gentrification (in most of its meanings), you are forming a circular firing squad."

"Today, the Old Leatherman is one of those stories that you either really deeply know or have never heard of at all."

The Neighborhoods visits my neighborhood, Crown Heights.

I had an idea this morning, and I was sure that/hoping that someone had done it before: Walking the Length of Long Island. Hmmm. HMMMMMM. 🤔

Bilge Ebiri and Michael Mann talk Thief.

"In our hyper-digital age, it's increasingly the context and framing of information (not the content itself) that drives debates."

"Dynamism does not just mean saying hello. Dynamism also means saying goodbye."

Music
Favorite of the week: Gino Vannelli, Brother to Brother. I first heard "I Just Wanna Stop" in the grocery store last week, and I just wanted to stop and tell you what I feel about it! So good!

Fairport Convention, Liege and Lief. Hippie rock.

Masahiro Takahashi, Humid Sun. Delicate electronic, like RPG village music.

Max Oazo, Moonessa, Once Upon a Time (Melodic House & Techno). Maybe I should listen to more remix albums? Played this a lot in work crunch-time this week. It's a good thing I've never tried any drugs – there's a plausible alternate timeline where I got lost in the club scene.

Movies
Rumble Fish. A story of a younger brother and an older brother and forming yourself on your own. With the benefit of hindsight, a totally loaded cast. Matt Dillon! Nicolas Cage! Laurence Fishburne! Diane Lane! Dennis Hopper! Mickey Rourke! Sofia Coppola! Tom Waits!

Elevation. An economical monster thriller. I had fun with it.

His Girl Friday. Madcap screwball antics. I wish they still wrote dialogue like this.

Birth. I love the way this movie looks, and Nicole Kidman puts on a show. Disturbing and depressing.

Den of Thieves. Compared to my week 3 viewing, not quite as fun. I like seeing the MARTA trains scoot by during the shootout.

TV
Bosch, s1e2.

The Pitt, s1e1. Under-recognized part of being an E.R. doc is you must repeatedly walk away from people who are in crisis.

The Residence, s1e4. Just parachuting in for a quick taste. Good example of the power of storytelling by charismatic people.

Severance, s2e7-8. I'm glad that Gemma is no longer an icon, but something more grounded. Cool to see factory town roots of Lumon.

Words of Wisdom
"Breaking the problem down and then actually changing behavior to get different results works surprisingly well provided you’re willing to do it. Often success doesn’t come to us the way we want to receive it."

A reminder to myself: It's nice to call my family. They've known me longer than anyone else, and there's no replacement. Lucky.

Art
Golden Pheasants in Snow, painting by Itō Jakuchū. Love how detailed and crowded this is, like an expensive wallpaper. A Musical Company in an Interior, oil painting by Pieter Symonsz Potter.

Books
After spending most of the year with Middlemarch, it's been a challenge to settle into another one. The Modern Myths: Adventures in the Machinery of the Popular Imagination has been pretty good so far. The Faerie Queene was a DNF.

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
"As an adult with any degree of complexity to your life: if you want your life full of more of the things you want, you should be willing to do those things imperfectly but frequently."

Leaning into my discomfort era.

An archive of ASCII bedrooms.

"Progressivism should not be a ritual to be followed; it should be a tool to getting real stuff that makes life better."

"All innovation (particularly social innovation) should be presented as a return to tradition."

"One of the most common megaproject failure modes is to not freak out soon enough, and having a concrete plan is the best antidote."

"Outside of Manhattan, 63% of all properties within one kilometer (1KM) of a subway have two stories or less, while 92% are three stories or less." Kinda crazy. So many easy wins just lying around.

New UI & UX in AI.

Movies
Conclave. Modest gossipy drama that evaporated as soon as I turned the TV off. It sets the stage, puts the pieces in motion, and we see who is left standing. I see what they did there, with the ending, and with the way women step into and out of the action througout, but… it felt a little cheap, after so much petty personal conflict and politicking, it suddenly wanted us to care about ideas?

Drive-Away Dolls. Horny and juvenile, but I appreciate how they play with the transitions, soundtrack, and moments of heightened acting. The bit parts were the best parts.

Speak No Evil (2022). A vacation from hell (see: The Rental). Like many good horror movies, we build unsettling dread and discomfort from the small ways that people fail to trust their instincts around other people who constantly push the boundaries. "Because you let me." An incredibly uncomfortable climax, sickening. Not sure I could watch that again – I immediately swore it off – but the lead-up was great.

Red Riding: 1974. A journalist gets hooked on a case, pays the price. It's good.

Speak No Evil (2024). After I cooled down from watching the original, curiosity about the remake won me over. More straightforwardly dramatic, less tense. More of a character piece, with much more focus on our main villain.

Heretic. I really appreciate late-career Hugh Grant. Seems like he's having fun. Mounting stress, a rich conflict, and heroines that surprise you.

Music
Thomas Tallis, Lamentations of Jeremiah perf. The Tallis Scholars.

A couple more from Luther Vandross this week…

• Give Me The Reason. "There's Nothing Better Than Love".
• Songs. Much more church-y, right from the start.

Jon Hopkins, Ritual. The opening few seconds of the album are so good, like a breath and a meditation chime. Draws you right in. "part v - evocation" made me think of the Gone Girl soundtrack (complimentary!).

Bill Evans, From Left to Right. Jazz with piano and Rhodes piano and orchestra and it's all good.

TV
The X-Files, s4e11 "El Mundo Gira". Back from a little break, and the show is back on track. I loved this episode. In style, like a telenovela, heightened soap opera desperation, but with a chupacabra.

Black Doves, s1e1. Something's missing…

A week of ups and downs – a trail race, an injured finger, a random Sunday evening adventure, a 24-hour stomach flu, a miserable workday, an invigorating professional conference, a beautiful evening run, a long call with a friend. Let it come, let it be, let it go.

The highlight was finishing Middlemarch yesterday, in one long final push. It's one of those books where I'll miss living with the characters for so long, each of their personalities and arcs so vivid. Some overall themes in the book: the importance of who you marry, how community inertia can defeat or deflect idealism but also help you find purpose and place, how financial struggles can multiply your frustrations, the value of a happy compromises and ordinary virtues.

Art
Lady at a Mirror by Candlelight oil on canvas by Godfried Schalcken.

Books
The Faerie Queene. Just dipped my toe in. We'll see if it lasts.

Middlemarch. Finally done, loved it. One last round of quotes:

• "He distrusted her affection; and what loneliness is more lonely than distrust?"
• "The lights were all changed for him both without and within."
• "What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope."
• "He had begun to perceive that Mr. Brooke’s mind, if it had the burthen of remembering any train of thought, would let it drop, run away in search of it, and not easily come back again."
• "He looked almost angry. It had seemed to him as if they were like two creatures slowly turning to marble in each other’s presence, while their hearts were conscious and their eyes were yearning."
• "If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new."
• "Caleb was very fond of music, and when he could afford it went to hear an oratorio that came within his reach, returning from it with a profound reverence for this mighty structure of tones, which made him sit meditatively, looking on the floor and throwing much unutterable language into his outstretched hands."
• "It was one of those gray mornings after light rains, which become delicious about twelve o’clock, when the clouds part a little, and the scent of the earth is sweet along the lanes and by the hedgerows."
• "He was now a prey to that worst irritation which arises not simply from annoyances, but from the second consciousness underlying those annoyances, of wasted energy and a degrading preoccupation"
• "For the majority, who are not lofty, there is no escape from sordidness but by being free from money-craving, with all its base hopes and temptations, its watching for death, its hinted requests, its horse-dealer’s desire to make bad work pass for good, its seeking for function which ought to be another’s, its compulsion often to long for Luck in the shape of a wide calamity."
• "Rosamond played the quiet music which was as helpful to his meditation as the plash of an oar on the evening lake."
• "that beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectably and unhappy men to live calmly"
• "Damme if I think he meant to turn king’s evidence; but he’s that sort of bragging fellow, the bragging runs over hedge and ditch with him"
• "There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that—to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail."
• "Shallow natures dream of an easy sway over the emotions of others"
• "We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves."
• "The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
Our interfaces have lost their senses.

Oliver Burkeman on toxic preconditions.

"Beyond interactivity, what a video game promises is not just rendered image and sound, not just narrative, not even just the joy of play, but inhabitation of an imaginal realm that is both deeply interior and collectively shared."

Music
Terry Callier, What Color Is Love. Folk/soul/blues with a warm baritone. Check out "Dancing Girl".

Nonkeen, All good?. "be a" pushes a lot of good buttons I love: mildly sinister bass, chattery snare, clicky cymbals, insistent tempo lots of layers.

Keith Jarrett, The Köln Concert. An hour of solo jazz explorations on piano.

Greg Foat, Gigi Masin, Dolphin. Lounge-y jazz shuffle, keyboards forward. I like "London Nights" and the walking bass in "Viento Calido".

Hatebreeed, Perseverance. By-your-bootstraps motivational therapy metal, hell yes!

Movies
Touch of Evil. Dynamic and quickly-moving, everything tainted.

TV
Scandal, s1e1. Speaking of quickly-moving, this is breakneck TV. "My gut tells me everything I need to know."

Bosch, s1e1. Felt good to dip back into the series, like putting on comfortable shoes.

Severance, s2e6. Burt is sketchy, huh. I liked the speculative fiction angles here: jealousy of yourself, jealousy of your partner's innie, innie/outie adultery, innies with souls distinct from their outies, etc..

Dark Winds, s1e5-6. Just along for the ride.

The last week was a blur! I felt most days I came back home feeling wound up but fuzzy-brained, and every morning I felt like I needed an early start to not feel overwhelmed.

I'm glad I ended the week with a race, the 11-mile event at the Squatchapple Trail Party at South Mountain Reservation out in New Jersey. Friday night, I didn't want to go – long week, bad training, low energy, wishing I had more time, etc. etc. etc.. Saturday morning, I kinda wanted to go, but not really, but I wanted to follow through on my commitment. Three miles into the race, I was so, so happy to be there. I wonder why I get in this kind of cycle.

I wiped out twice (both times on ~flat ground, and never on the reckless downhills!) and hyperextended my finger crash-landing during the second one. Worth the price

Art
Vessel in the Form of a Head, ceramic from the Missippian cultures of modern-day Arkansas, ca. 1450-1550. Apples, Grapes, Lemon on a Table (for BAM), print by David Hockney. Abstract Cityscape, oil on canvas by Léopold Survage. Salt or Pepper Shaker, earthenware and glaze designed by Russel Wright.

Books
Middlemarch, cont.

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
A Day At the Museum.

"We found that time spent on leisure over and above an individual's average was positively related to work-related self-efficacy, but only when the individual's leisure activities were high in seriousness and low in work-leisure similarity, or when they were low in seriousness and high in similarity." (via)

Stone Soup AI.

"These tools have removed a lot of the friction from coding and because of that, I am less likely to give up."

RIP, Gene Hackman. "To watch him, in any one of his almost insanely varied roles, often meant sitting there with your jaw hanging in disbelief. What was he doing? How was he doing it? Why am I buying it?" and "That’s the actor’s magic: capturing the attention of the camera and the viewer on the other side of the screen and transforming from Just A Guy into The Man." and "Hackman stood out by appearing ordinary while setting up bespoke fireworks displays […] a vivid illustration of what we might call the Gene Hackman Principle of Transformative Acting: The best special makeup is talent.".

Learn your lines, show up on time, and give it your all.

"Take a close look at what you assume the solution to your life must look like. Are there any of those assumptions that you could turn into variables instead?"

Music
Sierra Leone's Refugee All-Stars, Radio Salone. I love the reverb in the opener, "Chant It Down", but didn't love most of the album. One exception, with more drums and chorus and reverb: "Toman Teti M'Ba Akala".

Holy Tongue, The Tumbling Psychic Joy of Now. Ear-filling pulsing pagan electronic stuff.

Zapp! Love & Basketball's impact continues. Fun to listen through a decade of their work. All of these are solid, funky, fun:

• Zapp. "Be Alright" is a good slow burn.
• Zapp II – "Do You Really Want An Answer?" fits well with the Luther album I listened through later.
• Zapp III
• The New Zapp IV U – finally arrived at the only song I knew beforehand, "Computer Love". So good.

Luther, Never Too Much. I'll need to spend more time with his discography. Lots of stuff I like from e.g. Barry White and Lionel Ritchie shows up here. Can't beat the title track, and the backing vocals in "Don't You Know That?" add to the intrigue.

Gidion Kremer, Songs of Fate. Violin meanderings, didn't love it.

Hanni Liang, Voices for Solo Piano. I like the Sally Beamish's "Night Dances" – I hear it as curious and exploratory.

Movies
The Wild Robot. Visually, beautiful. I like the hand-painted look. The tory was stale and preachy, though, and music felt like replacement-level inspirational schlock. Still funny here and there. A far better movie about a robot learning to love and find common cause: The Iron Giant.

Gladiator II. I literally sat up straighter when Denzel came on screen. The movie is better when he's on screen, and fine when he's not. I appreciate how they escalated the Colosseum battles.

TV
The X-Files, s4e10 "Paper Hearts". Mulder has the longest leash any employee has ever had. Tom Noonan plays our villain so well – a calm approach, "I'm already in jail so, meh, let's just see if I can get anything out of this…".

Severance, s2e5. I kinda wish I got a perfect-bound volume for performance reviews?

The White Lotus, s3e2. This show is so strange. Sometimes it feels like watching a travel brochure, but with some very light plotting. Just a good long soak in a warm bath.

Words of Wisdom
"Life isn’t as long as you think it is. You have a choice: You can go and try to live a playful life, or you can go and live a life which excludes playfulness. And it doesn’t get you anywhere. Playfulness gets you somewhere."

Recently I moved up to the ChatGPT Pro subscription, and was surprised I felt mixed feelings about it, a sort of self-consciousness. I found myself thinking through a talk track to justify it, from a humanities perspective. I don't think I have well-informed thoughts on the methods – theft, presumptive use, plagiarism, rights of the creators, etc.. I'm sure that's written elsewhere and better.

But I did think about the history of humanity, and culture as this technology to promote ourselves forward - what we honor, stories we share, mistakes we've made, progress we've gained against the terrors we create or stumble upon, the collective wisdom of the ages. And now have a place where it's consolidated. That's cool, even if it's a fuzzy composite.

I also think about the idea of scenius. where in a time and a place, people come together and form something special. I'm not sure you can do that with just yourself and an LLM, in the same sense, but there may be something analogous – a willing and skilled collaborator at hand, one that by definition some experiences much vaster than your own. That's cool!

I grew up a library kid, in large part because my mom is a library adult. The type of library adult that gets a temporary visitor card at the local branch while on vacation. And now the library is right here, and you can have it be a teacher, too. "The great thing about dead or remote masters is that they can't refuse you as an apprentice. You can learn whatever you want from them." While it's not individual, and we're I'm not sure we have any new and distinctive works from AIs to inspire us... if you just want to learn a variety of things, you really can just dial one up and join the guild.

This week I had a teammate at work break down in tears. What a deviation from the norm! I've only seen this a couple times. Interesting experience to have to show up in a familiar way, in a totally different context.

I made a calendar of my 2024 running routes and finally got around to a test print. Need to do 2023 and get'em properly framed.

Art
Silhouette, illustration in India ink, charcoal, and gouache on wood pulp board by Man Ray. River Light, glass mosaic by Kiki Smith. Greatest New York, panoramic print by Henry Wellge. Freedom and Order: Children Playing, East 116th Street, photo by David M. Bernstein.

Books
Middlemarch. Need to pick up the pace. I'm still loving it, 2/3 complete, but also getting restless!

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
A vision of peak male performance, from an Economist profile of Tyler Cowen. "There is no concrete return on most of the data-accumulating he does. He has been researching, unpaid, for decades, at a rate that would put most people in hospital."

"For better or worse, when you start thinking about tractable problems, you’ll almost always find that you’re doing less than you could be doing and you might start to feel guilty."

"The place’s dual nature — its existence on the border between utopia and dystopia — has always been a part of the aesthetics." On the Severance building.

A gradient of time zones.

"This website collects movie clips with inaccurate binocular shots (i.e., two overlapping circles instead of one, as you would see in real life)."

Music
A few from west Africa to start the week. Starting with Youssou N'Dour, upbeat Senegalese:

• The Guide (Wommat). "Generations" has these great bippity rippedy bass lines.
• Joko: The Link, love the layere drumming in "Beykat".

Amadou & Mariam's Dimanche a Bamako didn't really click, but I did like the desert blues in the last track, "Gnidjougouya", the way the melody rises and falls and loops back, the dueling electrics, the harmonies crowding and clearing.

Speaking of desert blues, Tinirawen did click pretty well:

• Elwan, especially with the grungy guitar and unison vocals in "Sastanàqqàm".
• Idrache (Traces of the Past)

Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 7 rec. Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra cond. Simon Rattle. There's a lot happening in this piece. I remember really liking it when I first deep-dived Mahler years ago, but it didn't hit the same!

Bonjour Tristesse, The World Without Us, metal.

Scotch Rolex, Shackleton, Omutaba, Three Hands of Doom, sampled electronics. See "Insect Vibration".

Movies
Final Destination. It has a proper opening credits sequence, an efficient opener with good suspense and ensuing anguish, and then veers into Rube Goldberg death machines lol.

Running
I underestimated how much regular running improves my mood. Hard to recognize the value without the contrast of going without it for a while, but: it's great to have something consistent in your week that will put the juice back in.

TV
The X-Files, s4e9 "Terma". Back to the larger arc, with an action-movie feel. Mulder's re-entrance with a tan and a smirk is A+ television.

The White Lotus, s3e1. This is my first exposure to the franchise. I get why people would watch it.

Severance, s2e4. Irving was right!

Paradise, s1e1. Good excuse to rewatch The Shot™.

It's nice to spend time differently, to give a familiar situation a new flavor. I worked Monday, a holiday for many, and so I was working largely solo. And then took the Friday off, so I could feel the reverse – goofing off when most were plugging away. I also had the chance to catch up on admin stuff in the morning, at ease, when usually that gets filed away for the evening time.

This weekend we had a "spa night". Where ordinarily the evening might be pizza and movie, we put on face masks, moisturizers, serums; listened to a spa treatment playlist; ate fresh ceviche, granola bowls, probiotic juices, etc.. It's not something I want every day, but the change gave me a new appreciation, like stepping into a parallel universe and arriving back to the norm refreshed.

Art
Constructive City with Universal Man (Ciudad constructiva con hombre universal), oil painting on board by Joaquín Torres-García.

Composition, by Maria Helena Vieira da Silva. "The many colorful patterns […] derive from azulejo, decorative ceramic tilework common in Portugal and Spain, which the artist collected and admired."

Books
Middlemarch. Steadily chipping away and just past the halfway point. Let's do some more quotes:

• "We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire."
• "I can't wear my solemnity too often, else it will go to rags."
• "Mr. Casaubon, indeed, had not thoroughly represented to those mixed reasons to himself; irritated feeling with him, as with all of us, seeking rather for justification than for self-knowledge."
• "Time changes the proportion of things, and in later days it is preferable to have fewer sonnets and more conversation."
• "Will was not without his intentions to be always generous, but our tongues are little triggers which have usually been pulled before general intentions can be brought to bear."
• "She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception."
• "They were looking at each other like two fond children who were talking confidentially of birds."
• "Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self."
• "Her anger said, as anger is apt to say, that God was with her – that all heaven, though it were crowded with spirits watching them, must be on her side."
• "What is the use of being exquisite if you are not seen by the best judges?"

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
The wisdom of Tom Cruise: "You know, no one asks Gene Kelly, why do you dance? If I do a musical I want to sing, I want to dance. And I want to see how I can do it. You got to figure it out, it’s not just doing it. It’s how is it part of the story? How do we invest the audience in that? It’s always better to go for it, it’s always better to try than to tend to not do it. It’s always better to ask the question, and don’t be afraid."

A map of obscure islands.

Taking an Internet Walk, good ideas if you need to (re)learrn how to browse!

From Chat → Tools → Tasks → Crons? (via)

I'm glad I never spent time in school pickup lines as a kid. A bunch of times, we'd talk our bus driver into letting us off early so we could take a shortcut through the woods, rather than sitting on the bus another half-hour to wind its way to our door. It's smart to stay on good terms with your bus driver!

Ask for no, don't ask for yes.

"Blogs are a backwater (the web itself is a backwater) but keeping one is a statement of how being online can work. Blogging as a kind of Amish performance of a better life."

"CA attitude to US like Calif attitude towards Texas: many stereotypes, little knowledge, and getting crushed on growth."

Running
My first run back after illness was deflating. So much lost, so much to regain. :'(

Music
Marshall Allen released New Dawn at age 100. When you listen, you can understand why this guy would get along with Sun Ra. "African Sunset" and "Boma" are my faves.

Paolo Fresu, Richard Galliano, Jan Lundgren. Mare Nostrum. Jazz with piano, trumpet, accordion. You might recognize "Que reste-t-il de nos amours?", later adapted as "I Wish You Love".

John Luther Adams, big orchestra stuff in An Atlas of Deep Time and Waves & Particles. I prefer the first one.

Individual songs on repeat: Roger's "I Want to Be Your Man" and James Holden's remix of The Smile's "Don't Get Me Started".

Movies
Da 5 Bloods. "War never ends for those involved." We're so lucky to have Spike Lee. Complicating complex issues, no one comes out innocent. Familiar methods at work: lots of history lessons and documentary imagery mixed in, direct address to the camera when reading letters.

Sisu. Nazis try to steal gold from a lonesome Finnish miner out in the countryside, and… he is not pleased. Carnage! Pretty ideal 90-minute taciturn action-western.

The First Omen. Now I understand why kids named "Damien" are always evil. The suspense is better than the climax, but that's most of the movie, so, thumb-up.

The Last Samurai. Scratches the The Last of the Mohicans or Dances With Wolves itch in a different way – more focus on the budding friendship, less on the personal stakes.

Katsumoto: You believe a man can change his destiny?
Algren: I think a man does what he can, until his destiny is revealed.

TV
Severance, s2e3. Reintegration!