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!

I got sick this week, catching some local plague that had me down, but not out. This is what happens when I laugh in the face of the gods. I'd just had a conversation last week about my run of good health.

In hindsight, pushed it just a little bit too far on run last Sunday – heading out to run in the snow because it's fun, regardless of that slight hint of a sniffle and tickle in the back of my throat.

It turned into an opportunity of its own. To skip the commute and work from home so I don't infect people. To take a little extra time with the morning coffee ritual. To cut out evening commitments and recognize how much time I have, to recognize the choices available when I get back in the swing of things.

Art
Terra cotta vase by Fritz Albert. I love the twisted pedestal base, like long leaves.

A Pende carving of a man riding a buffalo.

Books
Middlemarch!

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
I wrote about my favorite movies seen in 2024.

A woman has been journaling for 90 years. (via)

"This is a map of my life, where each week I’ve been alive is a little box."

Citibike Stories. Bike rental travel patterns in NYC neighborhoods, lovely mapping.

Jane Austen Math, "ranking all of Austen’s single men across four weighted dimensions — fortune, morals, manners, and [sex appeal] — to develop secondary insights, calculate their individual total status, and analyze their relative marital desirability."

What people get wrong about today's NBA. A great counterpoint video on the idea that "they all just shoot threes".

Kevin Kelly offers 50 years of travel tips. I like his model of "R&R" vs. "E&E". A few philosophies that caught my eye:

• "Organize your travel around passions instead of destinations."
• "The most significant criteria to use when selecting travel companions is: do they complain or not, even when complaints are justified? No complaining! Complaints are for the debriefing afterwards when travel is over."
• "Although it tries, money cannot buy what time delivers."
• "Laser out, meander back."

You Need More Lux. "Lux are the measure of how much light you get. Summer sunlight is about 100,000 lux. An overcast winter day is 1,000 to 2,500 lux. This is a huge difference!"

Test Driven Writing (or Test Driven Documentation).

"Aim to be 90% done in 50% of the available time."

Movies
To Live and Die In L.A.. Good to finally cross this one off the list. Corruption is contagious!

The Blue Gardenia. Raymond Burr! I grew up watching Perry Mason re-runs on daytime TV. So it was fun to see him in movies, and so young, in this and Crime of Passion last week. Also features a Nat King Cole spot! We need more stars popping in for musical interludes.

Nosferatu (2024). Seductive, horrifying, beautiful, crushingly sad. Eggers is such a talent. Has me thinking about revisiting The Northman again.

Love & Basketball. A sweet story with characters are charming and frustrating. I really like the parallel sequences of games/practice, with each on their same-but-different journey.

I Saw the Devil. Korean revenge flick. We spend a lot of time with the villain, and he is tremendously haunting. Seeking vengeance will poison you.

Arcadian. Post-apocalyptic monsters out on the farm. Nicolas Cage delivers, and the monsters are right up there with the inventiveness in Attack the Block and Annihilation. There's a few moments of counting here, feels like they could have extended that somehow. It's fun!

Music
Giridhar Udupa, My Name Is Giridhar Udupa. The opener "Aadhi – The Beginning" is exemplary – woozy pulsing electronics with ceramic drum cross-rhythms. Really fun album.

Jeremy Ledbetter Trio, Gravity. Tight, crisp jazz pieces. I really like the patterns in in "Two Cousins".

n.o. Arts Ensemble, Deaths and Entrances. Melancholy operatic chamber work, some hints of olde Renaissance music.

Ambrose Akinmusire, honey from a winter stone. "MYanx" has some hard funk, spoken-word, very freewheeling.

TV
The X-Files, s4e8 "Tunguska". Frickin' Krycek, I swear…

I watched 125 movies in 2024. That total was down from 178 in 2023, and I'm glad for that. The year before felt like too many, too indiscriminate. I took 2024 at a healthier pace, and I feel like my choices were pretty dialed-in. The top ~20% of those 125 are easily recommendable, so I'll share those.

For the very top tier, I'll excerpt my previous write-ups. These are the first-time viewings that really moved me, or stuck with me long after, listed in the order I saw them:

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. Coming of age that pays attention to the parents, too.

You see that Margaret is different – or at least that this won’t (only) be a typical coming-of-age/tween romance story – early on when we first see her bedroom. We see maps and star charts, and in her voiceover prayers, a search for place and meaning.

Godzilla Minus One. Melodrama at its finest.

I appreciate this as a period piece, and not just in costume – also works in an orchestral soundtrack, and heightened acting and staging that wouldn’t be out of place in the late 1940s. Fascinated by this idea of Godzilla being a creature known to locals, but barely a rumor elsewhere. Unresolved shame will keep you from love!

Das Lehrerzimmer (The Teacher's Lounge). Perfect rendition of how our actions can ripple out unexpectedly.

A school community frays when a thief runs loose, frustrations rise, and accusations start flying. This will make my best-of list at the end of the year. But you don’t have to take my word for it: “It’s probably the best thriller of this type since “Uncut Gems,” another movie where just watching realistic characters making bad decisions was so nerve-wracking that it made you want to crawl under your seat.“

Crooklyn. What's that line about happy families being alike, and unhappy ones in theor own way?

Love the hilarious chaos of a 5-kid household, and the variety of “characters” on the block, and the lively soundtrack, and the shock of travel to foreign lands (Virginia).

Gosford Park. Not sure I've seen any movies that juggle a web of relationships as well and as lovingly as this one. Flows effortlessly from scene to scene.

Gossipy upstairs/downstairs intrigue and murder mystery, constantly mocking Americans, Hollywood, buffoon cops, catty elites. Kristin Scott Thomas is a natural at snobbery. Love how it takes huge cast and makes it feel natural. You assemble the collage as you go along.

Hundreds of Beavers. No other movie pushed its ideas as far, and then further, and then a little bit more, and why not, how about a little bit more.

Made me feel alive again! Talk about a palate cleanser. A masterclass in escalation. Zany blend of animation and practical effects, Looney Tunes silliness and an improv troupe’s “why not?” go-for-broke attitude.

Red Rooms. Can't recall any recent movies that burrowed under my skin like this one. It is true horror in the moral sense. A cautionary tale for the web!

This draws you into the most queasy, vile territory. We never directly see much violence, but we see the harm it does to people who feed on it. Our protagonist is uncomfortably lacking in affect – except a horrifying climax where she participates in an auction.

Here are the other worthy contenders from my watching year. If you told me you were going to watch one of these, I'd be excited for you and curious to hear what you think. Links are to my previous posts, again in order I saw them.

• The Creator
• Phoenix
• Zone of Interest
• Picnic at Hanging Rock
• Aniara
• Passing
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
• Jagged Edge
• The Rental
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
• Beast
• I Saw the TV Glow
• Presumed Innocent
• Master Gardener
• Deathtrap
• Freaky Friday (2003)

For the last week, I've been obsessed with my new CO₂ monitor. It's been so fun to keep tabs on it throughout the day. I notice how it spikes when I get trapped in a meeting room, or after cooking; and how it gradually trends upward over the course of the day indoors; and how quickly it drops when I throw a window open.

I didn't have much reason to get it other than curiosity. I've seen snippets about how high levels of CO₂ affect cognition, drowsiness, etc., but wasn't sure I was actively suffering in that way. But I suppose it's like that business idea that you can manage what you can measure, but translating more to a personal skill. I remember learning how to use a ruler as a kid, and a thermometer, and counting heartbeats, and then running around and using them on stuff and seeing different numbers. Eventually you can guess how tall that building is, what the temperature is right now, what 25°F will feel like, or that your heart rate is oddly high for what you're doing.

Maybe I'll be able to do the same for CO₂ and humidity at some point? Anyway, another way to learn more about the world! I'll probably do more purchases like this this year.

Art
Velório da noiva (Bride's Wake) and Colheita de flores (Flower Picking), paintings Maria Auxiliadora Silva.

Winter Scene in Brooklyn, oil on canvas by Francis Guy. (Dumbo used to look like this?!)

A textile fragment from the Paracas culture of Peru. "Composite beings celebrate the importance of the agricultural cycle. Both figures carry strings of lima beans in one hand while chili peppers emanate from a staff in the other and tubers float above their heads."

Running
I've now run every street in Park Slope. And that makes 5 additional neighborhoods where I've run every street, since finishing up my local Crown Heights stomping grounds. Sunday morning runs in fresh powder, highly recommended.

Books
Middlemarch! So fun. More quotes:

• "'The theatre of all my actions is fallen,' said an antique personage when his chief friend was dead; and they are fortunate who get a theatre where the audience demands their best."
• "It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self – never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our unconsciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardor of a passion, the energy of an action."
• "There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a discussion cooly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy."
• "As the sore palate findeth grit, so an uneasy consciousness heareth innuendoes."
• "In all failures, the beginning is certainly the half of the whole."
• "She felt that her tears had risen, and it was no use to try to do anything else than let them stay like water on a blue flower or let them fall over her cheeks."
• "The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action."
• "The troublesome ones in a family are usually either the wits or the idiots."

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
Craig Mod reflects on 6 years of the membership program. There is wisdom here: "The program exists for the goals, not the members".

The 1997 Nike/Penny Hardaway Super Bowl commercial had an insane number of stars!

Norm Macdonald tells a long story about a pig.

"Those who write for children have the chance to point them towards beauty that they do not yet know exists: towards versions of joy that they have not yet imagined possible."

"Horizon of uncertainty" is a really neat phrase.

"Employees are at an established company because they made a decision in life for stability. Embrace that, continue to provide stability (currency for employees) in these uncertain times as it will be key to steadying the ship and retaining talent. […] If your company employee age is trending younger (ie. folks have only just started pushing out babies) then you'll need create space for them to be able to grow on the job." The management politics of implementing AI will be interesting to watch.

How far you can get from London by train in 12 hours.

Movies
Crime of Passion. A driven newspaper journalist rejects the roles that society wants for her, plots a way to power. What should we make of Rivera's "Cargador de Flores (Flower Carrier)" framed in the main couple's bedroom?

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.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. Franchise complete. I don't remember the different movies/plots in this franchise all that well, but I'll put this one pretty high on the list. I like the wartime/battle scenes, and Ron really redeems himself from the previous, making himself useful again. Appreciate how many people get to contribute throughout the series (e.g. destroying horcruxes). It's not just the Harry show.

Music
AYRTBH, Bust Fossil. Electronic textures, I suppose? Not sure what to make of it all, but I like "bicycle" and "beverage".

Mdpri & Git Busy Trio, BA*. Jazz/funk/hiphop. "又鸟鸡鸡鸡鸡" is sampling/homaging something but I can't put my finger on it…

Sestetto Dino Piana & Oscar Valdambrini, 10 Situazioni. Some of it sounds like '70s TV show themes (complimentary!). "Placido" is v. nice.

Kibrom Birhane, Here and There. Ethiopian jazz with a lil' bit of butt-shakin'. Check out "Maleda".

Marshall Allen, the New Dawn single for his upcoming album. I like "African Sunset".

Triosence, Giulia, crisp piano jazz trio.

Voision Xi, Queen and Elf. Soft ballads, lounge singer stuff.

Various Artists, Guruguru Brain Wash 2.

TV
The X-Files, s4e7 "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man". I had a strong negative reaction after I first watched it, but then I did some reading around, and now I rank it pretty high? Regardless of the literal truth of the story we see, appreciate the reflection on CSM's loneliness, and an opportunity to ponder the character beyond the plot purpose to foil investigations.

Severance, s2e2. Interesting to see more adventurous camerawork here. Milchick is the creepiest person in town and I don't understand why people keep inviting him inside their homes!

This week at work I had to reckon with not being as productive as I could have been. A bit embarrassing to take a look back at previous weeks, and see with 20-20 hindsight, so much under-used capacity. But as with many things in life, big dividends can come from renewing your focus, cleaning up bad habits, and taking on a little more than you think you can handle. Like I talk about with running a lot, I like checking in every now and then and see where my limits really are. An emotionally exhausting week but it also opened up a lot more. The ceiling is higher than it was a week ago.

Art
A Taino ceremonial seat (duho) or platter. "The large eyes, gaping mouth, and curled toes of this figure suggest a heightened state associated with the consumption of cohoba. This vegetal hallucinogen was used by Taino spiritual healers and leaders to communicate with supernatural forces. The figure lies on his back with fists clenched behind his head, and wears a woven skull cap and bands around his arms and legs. He is identified as a zemi, a deity or ancestral spirit that permeated the Greater Antilles."

Woman on Rose Divan, oil on canvas by Henri Matisse.

An Ethiopian fly whisk made of bone, dyed horsehair, and plant fiber.

Books
Middlemarch!

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
"If you’re roughly 70% happy with a piece of writing you’ve produced, you should publish it."

28 Films for the 28 Days of Black History Month. I watched a couple of the shorts, the Sesame Street "Cracks" short is really interesting and I liked the child detective story in The Case of the Elevator Duck, too. The Magnificent Major features a young Tisha Campbell

In How to Change the NYC Charter to Solve the Housing Emergency, Part 1 and Toward a Blogosphere That Can Draft Law, really appreciating Daniel Golliher's… I'm not sure how to describe it – entrepreneurial civics? There is a lot of progress lying around waiting to be picked up.

"Americans need to know that when the future comes, we’ll all get to go together."

"Informed rejection is a perfectly acceptable choice. But avoidance, especially with tech, is a default whose feasibility continues to shrink with every innovation."

"The winners will be those people who have exercised a whole bunch of curiosity." and "The future belongs to people whose work cannot be easily reduced to a dataset, and who can use AI to become even better at what they do."

What fully automated firms will look like.

"The time to snoop around for “waste” is when everything else is going so great you’re getting sort of bored."

Music
Daniel Trifonov, My American Story, with Philadelphia Orchestra. This album helped me have an A+ lovely morning commute.

Adam Rudolph, Archaisms I and Archaisms II. I remember a moment listening to this at work last week when I was growing more and more frantic and unfocused and it's because "Archaisms A2" was taking over my brain.

Caroline Shaw continues to be one of the most interesting composers. A few singles, choral works, presumably for an upcoming album:

• Inhale
• In Waves
• In the Beginning

Various, Seippelabel, Vol. 11. Lots of ambient space wash. I'll keep this around for a while.

The Orb, Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld.

Vijay Ayer, Compassion.

Movies
Carry-On. Great fun. Good to see a "regular guy" action movie. From the director who brought you other great regular-guy thrillers like The Shallows, Non-Stop and Run All Night. Reliable!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1. Everything is grey! At least we get more color on the core friendships. Ron is exasperating, though. I like the "travel around the world to collect stuff" aspect (a core RPG element), and especially like the zombie/apocalypse movie vibe on the return to Godric's Hollow.

TV
The X-Files, s4e6 "Sanguinarium". Witchcraft and cosmetic surgery! This was fun, if gruesome.

Severance, s2e1. At long last, started the new season. Putting out this theory before I continue the season: Ms. Casey is in a coma or something – basically accidentally severed – and she can only wake up and function as a partial "innie" version, and MDR is helping with some sort of sketchy scifi brain repair work.

Yesterday I went to an afternoon choral concert put on by the Park Slope Singers, a local amateur community group. The main work was C.H.H. Parry's Songs of Farewell.

There was something pleasantly low-key and make-do about the whole thing. It was a refreshing change from the military polish you'd find at your major orchestra and operas and ballets, every moment from arrival to tickets to entrance to first notes drilled to perfection.

It was informal and welcoming, the audience talked back to the conductor, a man got up to use the bathroom during the singing, and there were miscues and wrong notes here and there. And it was lovely. A group of people volunteering their own time to do something they love and share their gifts. A beautiful thing, to gather with others and do your best.

One of the settings was John Gibson Lockhart's poem, "There is an Old Belief":

There is an old belief,
That on some solemn shore,
Beyond the sphere of grief
Dear friends shall meet once more.
Beyond the sphere of Time and Sin
And Fate's control,
Serene in changeless prime
Of body and of soul.

That creed I fain would keep
That hope I'll ne'er forgo,
Eternal be the sleep,
If not to waken so.

Art
A turquoise standing male figurine from the Wari culture of Peru.

Greyhound Bus, photo by Ming Smith, part of the "August Moon" series on exhibition at the Columbus Museum of Art.

Books
Middlemarch, cont. What a fun book. Happy to keep going. Another round of quotes in the meantime…

• "Money's a good egg; and if you've got money to leave behind you, lay it in a warm nest."
• "Their eyes met with that peculiar meeting which is never arrived at by effort, but seems like a sudden divine clearance of haze."
• "I think any hardship is better than pretending to do what one is paid for, and never really doing it."
• "Time, like money, is measured by our needs."
• "One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!"
• "I don't translate my own convenience into other people's duties."
• "A sense of contributing to form the world's opinion makes conversation particularly cheerful."
• "I call that the fanaticism of sympathy. […] If you carried it out you ought to be miserable in your own goodness, and turn evil that you might hae no advantage over others. The best piety is to enjoy – when you can. You are doing the most then to save the earth's character as an agreeable planet. And enjoyment radiates. […] Would you turn all the youth of the world into a tragic chorus, wailing and moralizing over misery? I suspect that you have some false belief in the virtues of misery, and want to make your life a martyrdom."

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
Middlemarch is trending…

The past isn't irrelevant, it's just poorly transmitted. I love this framework: "We first have to look at legacy and innovation as constants and tools."

Archaeologists Are Finding Dugout Canoes in the American Midwest as Old as the Great Pyramids of Egypt. (via)

2025: New York City's Electoral College Election.

A guide to falling in love with New York City.

What is the "Brooklyn" of each city?

"It took visiting roma/la condesa to truly realize that “williamsburg” has been one of america’s most powerful cultural exports of the 21st century".

How sci-fi can have drama without dystopia or doomerism.

Digital avatars when streaming the Australian Open?

No, we are not producing too many STEM graduates and Ignore the Grifters - AI Isn't Going to Kill the Software Industry.

Movie critic Tyler Smith of Battleship Pretension fame released Cinematic Suffering: Reviews of Terrible Movies.

Movies
Oppenheimer. I like how it takes care to situate you in the time – The Wasteland, Stravinsky, Cubism, etc.. Emily Blunt's voice/delivery is so good, and don't think I've ever seen Josh Hartnett so fully in the moment. Maybe the best moment is when the man at the center of it all is suddenly no longer powerful. What do you do next?

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The greyest film to date. Wish we had more Snape story. Good to see relationships building among the students, and to see Harry less angry, and seeing his caring side. Also interesting that Harry doesn't battle in the end, but only witnesses. I don't think the mourning scene stuck the landing. One cool thing about Hogwarts I'm just now noticing: the kids have phones, no TV, no Switch, etc.. Just newspapers and books and fireplaces and each other's company.

TV
The X-Files, s4e5 "The Field Where I Died". Multiple personalities and past lives and doomer cults. Mulder/Scully relationship is more volatile than usual here, with Scully calling Mulder out on his constant selfishness. I like the rich contrasty images in this episode.

Severance, s1e6–9. Rewatch complete, really glad to have done it. Can't believe it's been so long.

Music
Missy Mazzoli, Vespers for a New Dark Age. Inventive chamber choir work, very nice.

Yaminahua, Derelict. Opens ominous, hyperkinetic factory EDM.

Brie Larson (yes), Finally Out of P.E.. I had no idea!

Back to Ajate again, this time a pair…

• Alo. "De De" is the winner.
• Abrada. I like the wa-wa funk in "Okamin".

Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, Challengers OST. If you've heard their other work, you know it's good and you know what you're in for.

Berlioz, open this wall. Jazz/lounge-inflected house music, see the muted trumpet + found vocal snippets on "nytmp".

Running
Back-to-back long runs this weekend, practicing running while tired. A few runs in the teensºF, and luckily not windy enough to make it terrible. Race coming in a month and a half!

I've mentioned goblin mode a couple times (2024 week 4 and week 36), and this week I had another go-round, a shortened version. For me it usually involves an intentionally horrible diet, and playing videogames too long, and not going to bed on time, and so on. Minor sins, available for a limited time only.

I think about it like a bizarro mirror image of New Year's resolutions. Every so often, it's good to think about getting your act together. But it can warp your perspective, turning your life into a never-ending battle of shoring things up. Designing your goblin mode gives you a program for letting go for a time… and a chance to prove you can snap back to your standards. Permission to "fail" is a valuable thing.

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
RIP, David Lynch. Kyle MacLachlan remembers his friend. I didn't love the couple of Lynch films I've seen, but appreciated the spirit of gentle, earnest, insistent optimism and goofiness, maybe most apparent in the daily weather reports he did for a while. And I was glad to see the bits of folk wisdom that surfaced in my feeds in wake of his death:

• "I wish what every addict wishes for: that what we love is good for us."
• "Anger and depression and sorrow are beautiful things in a story, but they’re like poison to the filmmaker or artist. They’re like a vise grip on creativity. If you’re in that grip, you can hardly get out of bed, much less experience the flow of creativity and ideas. You must have clarity to create. You have to be able to catch ideas."
• "It’s like dipping a white cloth into gold dye; you dip it and that’s meditation, then you hang it on the line in sunshine and that’s activity. The sun bleaches it until it’s white again, so you dip it and hang it again, and each time you do that a little more of the gold stays in the cloth. Then one day that gold is locked in."

I wish The David Lynch Quote Collection cited the sources, but they have the ring of truth. Lynch directed a haunting PSA about littering in NYC, too.

I loved this conversation between Zena Hitz and Henry Oliver on The Common Reader, especially the linked part, analogizing the great literary works to great songs: "Me reading Lady Macbeth's speech when I was 14 – what use did that get me? Nothing obvious. Except that sometimes the words are still in my head, and they echo in my head the way a great piece of music does." I'd never thought of it this way, remembering snippets of plot or quotes or emotions, the way we might feel things again when we remember a chorus or a swelling of violins or what-have-you.

And they discuss living with these works, and how it's good to read the great books early, so you can re-read and grow with them, and draw different meanings. (Made me think of how so many Motown songs were so fun as a kid, and as an adult, I can better recognize the anguish and frustration behind many of them.) The episode also has good critique of common methods literary criticism – "explaining things away, rather than raising problems.", and a recollection of George Steiner's encouragement to memorize poetry because it gives you ballast against the tides of life.

Let the user help solve their own problem. "The algorithmic-only model admits only one remedy: Improve the algorithm. But because no algorithm will ever be perfect, you’ll be playing this game of whac-a-mole forever." This feels most true in e.g. Twitter feed and Spotify Weekly playlist. They will both nose-dive, quickly, if I don't give it them hard shake every now and then. (via)

Why everything might have taken so long. (via)

Oliver Burkeman on the right dose of self-discipline. "Somehow, I’d turned the thrilling prospect of a better life into a sequence of lifeless tasks I had to execute – and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it."

Nabeel Qureshi collected some principles for living.

• "Once you are ok with people telling you ‘no’, you can ask for whatever you want. (Make reality say no to you.)"
• "Doing things is energizing, wasting time is depressing. You don’t need that much ‘rest’."
• "Think in writing."
• "The most valuable feedback usually hurts a lot."

Decline the cease-and-desist of winter!

Watching Your House Burn on a Ring Camera. I'd never thought of this possibility.

Art
Farm near Duivendrecht oil on canvas Piet Mondrian. I don't think I'd ever seen a Mondrian that wasn't abstract color blocks, so this was really neat peek into the past, trying to imagine the steps in between.

Music
Tchaikovsky & Ellington: The Nutcracker Suites perf. Harmonie Ensemble/New York. Classical and jazz performances, both perfect in their own way.

Dobrinka Tabakova, Kynance Cove, On the South Downs, and Works for Choir. Lovely collection of choral work, peaceful and smooth. The "Magnificat" from Truro Canticles might be my fave.

Laura Cannell, The Rituals of Hildegard Reimagined. Reminds me of Flute 3000, in the best way.

Mount Eerie, Night Place. Languid rock. I haven't listened to anything like this in a while. Took a while to get my ears situated again!

Mk.Gee, Two Star & The Dream Police. Maybe like Prince x Frank Ocean (complimentary, of course)? See: "DNM" and "I Want".

Movies
Den of Thieves. I never should have waited so long to see this. I was expecting something more schlocky (like, Expendables-level antics?) but this was tighter than expected. The main characters were all a little… off? I like when a movie can surprise you not for plot reasons but character reasons. That's good stuff. You can see the fingerprints from Heat throughout the movie – dumpsters subbing in for airport substations might be my favorite. Appreciated seeing Eric Braeden in a small role here – his Victor Newman in The Young and the Restless back in the '80s/'90s filled me with envy and fury.

Rebel Ridge. Opens with an Iron Maiden song, nice. Echoes of Rambo, with the opening confrontation passing over a bridge, and the contrast of military decency vs. police cravenness. I appreciate the inciting incident is a straightforward abuse of power, civil asset forfeiture, that isn't strictly personal. At least not at the start. Really liked our main character's calm, mostly polite, deliberate delivery – you can tell it takes effort, and that makes you more curious than a direct threat might. Excited to see what Aaron Pierre gets up to next.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It's good that the core three has loosely expanded to six, because Harry is exhausting to be friends with. Ron and Hermione could use a breather. I love the Death Eater masks!

Books
Middlemarch, cont.

TV
The X-Files, s1e4 "Unruhe". Spooky predictive death photos + an exploration of mental illness.

Severance, s1e3–5. I like see Cobel/Selvig put on the back foot a little bit by the Board, and clawing her way back. She's can't-look-away awful!

Last week was my first full week of work this year, and Monday was tough. I woke up physically well-rested and ready, but my mind was… not in the mood. From eyes-open, my mind was delivering a comically-enthusiastically-worst version of my inner monologue – sour, pessimistic, cynical, dreary.

I flip back and read my old journals every now and then. And in the periods when I was in deep depression, I can recognize myself, like an old friend. But can't relate to those feelings in the same way. It's very past-tense. My mindset is so different now from those years living in an emotional fogbank. At some point I decided – more or less – that I was done with it, and as I found my way out, I grew an important skill: knowing when to ignore myself!

So that was Monday: my inner voice had a lot to say about how miserable he was. But these days it's easier to say, "cool story, bro, but we have things to do". That sour version? I can wait him out while I move on with my day. A bit of keep-busy here, some mindless scrolling there, an attentive version of "going through the motions", and counting on a night of sleep to wash it all clean. Worked like a charm, Tuesday was lovely.

Art
Reminiscence of a Cathedral, oil on canvas by František Kupka. (Interesting to compare with the Norman Lewis cathedral from 2024 week 52.)

Torso of a Young Man, sculpture in colored plaster by Raymond Duchamp-Villon.

Benin/Edo crest mask in copper alloy and iron.

Harrowing woodcut block print by Wharton Esherick.

Small Town by Day (Badische Kleinstadt bei Tage), oil painting on board by Georg Scholz.

Running
I finished running every street in another neighborhood. At least, where I drew my boundaries for one – the Lefferts/Flatbush area between Empire, Parkside, Linden, and Utica.

That last run was a very "thinky" one, similar to my Monday experience. Temps were in the mid-20s, strong winds, and I was just tired. I had to fine-tune what I paid attention to in my body, balancing exertion to make progress and stay warm vs. overheating that leads to sweating and chills.

And same for my mind, starting out with a steady stream of "I don't want to go. Is this worth it? I'm tired. This is boring. I could turn back – it will be here next weekend. Etc." That was the first two-thirds of the run. And then it flipped. Suddenly I was 2 or 3 miles from wrapping up a months-long goal, new wind in my sails, and the jog home felt easier than when I first stepped out. The mind is a funny thing.

I also took accidental pocket photos.

Books
Middlemarch. I'm loving how detailed the characters are. We understand their mannerisms, their differences in speech, what they say, their own thoughts on what they're saying and reacting to. Eliot uses the omniscient perspective well. I'm charmed, hope it keeps up. Perhaps I'll share some quotes every now and then...

• "Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them."
• "The mere idea that a woman had a kindness towards him spun little threads of tenderness from out his heart toward hers."
• "We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts-not to hurt others."
• "Brooke is a very good fellow, but pulpy; he will run into any mould, but he won't keep shape."
• "He was gradually discovering the delight there is in frank kindness and companionship between a man and a woman who have no passion to hide or confess."
• "His efforts at exact courtesy and formal tenderness had no defect for her. She filled up all blanks with unmanifested perfections."

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
What could we gain if adults reclaimed the freedom to play?

"Now I think the best response to losing is to take it as easily as possible. Maybe not enjoyment, but bemusement if you can manage it." Reminded me of Hawks player Larry Nance Jr. on staying balanced after wins and losses: "An old saying one of my vets taught me was, 'What do we do with shit? Flush it and move on.' […] Always, the most important game is the next one."

Photographs of Snowmen (1854–1950). What a lovely collection.

Untouched Policy Areas: Pre-packaged ideas for the budding wonk.

"The boomerask starts with someone asking a question, but—like a boomerang—the question returns quickly to its source."

"Demand for apprenticeships is outpacing their availability."

"Requiring students to take general courses to demonstrate competencies that AI can replicate serves no educational purpose. The university’s role in the AI era is teaching students how to participate individually in knowledge creation, not just knowledge consumption."

"Websites will be increasingly aware that they’re being consumed by AI, and they will have a vested interest in messing with the way AI ‘perceives’ them."

Technical writing predictions for 2025.

"This is your update about getting by as a visitor to a China that has tried to remove all cash from daily life".

I like Notion's face-maker. A self-portrait, as of January 2025:

Music
I spent most of my time with a couple more from Blood Incantation (picking up from 2024 week 50)…

• Timewave Zero. Loving this album – relaxing, dreamy, drony, ominous ambient/electronic drifts.
• Hidden History of the Human Race. Start contrast: very not-relaxing, nightmarish metal riffs and guttural screams. The range!

SML, Small Medium Large. Exploratory… jazz? Electronic? Whatever you can do with bass, synthesizer, saxophone, percussion, and guitar, you'll find it here. It's cool!

The Durutti Column, Fidelity. I have a hard time situating this album in 1996. Maybe with so much of the band's history in the '80s, it's impossible not to have some of that sound carry on with them. I like the submerged feeling of "Grace".

Ajate, Dala Tuni. High-energy afrobeat. I love the buzzing marimbas in "Waya Yawa".

Movies
Foe. Kind of clunky. It has an interesting concept strangled by weird choices. At first I thought the method was roundabout Malickian dreaminess, but later concluded it's just… bad construction. The leads are supposed to be sad and torn, but they come off as inconsistent, wooden, and a little insane. Aaron Pierre is a compelling presence, thought, so I'll move Rebel Ridge higher on my watchlist.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Hormones are raging at Hogwarts! Continues the darkness from #3, and we even get our first death. Interesting to see an increase in embedded handheld/steadicam shots.

TV
The X-Files, s4e3 "Teliko". At the very least, it led to a fun use of ChatGPT: making it tell me a few Bambara folktales.

Severance, s1e1-2. Really happy with the rewatch so far, connecting the tidbits that I didn't know what to do with the first time around.