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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Narrative String Theory. (via)

The New Yorker on the best films of 2025.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Line of Duty, s5e2

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

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

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

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

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

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

One Long River of Song.

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

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

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

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

American AI influencing the language of British legislators.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movies
n/a, oops!

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

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

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

Sharp Objects, s1e1.

Sex and the City, s1e1–2.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Books
Crossroads of Twilight.

Breakneck.

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

My first months in cyberspace. (via Jason Kottke)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Last of Us, s1e1.

Last week I went bouldering for the first time in 6 years or so. So great! I need to work that back into my life. For me it’s one of those pleasures like playing guitar or videos, where I never got very good, don’t particularly care, and find a lot of satisfaction in re-learning the basics every now and then.

Books
Sense and Sensibility. Things I’m appreciating: mixing dialogue with summary of dialogue and the way the narration undercuts and pokes fun at its subjects. Also appreciating how primogeniture and entailment make even the most comfortably wealthy women so vulnerable. An incredibly enjoyable book.

Running
This weekend I ran a long loop touring some of my least-favorite neighborhoods, and had a great time. It’s not only where you are, but what you make of it.

Around the Web
Zadie Smith on The Art of the Impersonal Essay. “It’s in that optimistic spot that I set out my stall, yes, and my ideas and arguments such as they are, sure, but without demanding to see anyone’s identifying papers in the opening paragraph.”

“Just remembering that everything is connected to the heart can spare you a lot of suffering.”

Encourage purposeful friction. “In general, if you can reduce the friction required to start doing or continue doing a thing, you’re more likely to do that thing, and keep doing it longer. Great! Helpful. Unless the thing is something you don’t want to keep doing.”

“We specialise in whatever whoever has recently died specialised in.”

A 13-meter long table made from a 5000-year old oak log.

Illiteracy is a policy choice. “If you live where I do, in Oakland, California, and you cannot afford private education, you should be seriously considering moving to Mississippi for the substantially better public schools.”

“I decided to deconstruct the linguistic memes that dominated the Twitter-waves this year.”

Who’s Getting Rich Off Your Attention?

“Rich people want middle class culture but delivered in a bespoke, upmarket form“.

Why Warm Countries Are Poorer? “A big percentage of equatorial population actually lives in mountains: The closer to the equator, the higher up the capitals!”

Good phrase: “mapping the space between one-off demo and load-bearing infrastructure“.

“Aphorisms never accomplish anything. Their whole talent is traveling beyond their occasion, gathering force as they go, to end up on a refrigerator magnet.”

“If you want to be able to finish large, complex projects, you have to practice finishing things. which usually means doing smaller projects.”

My website is ugly because I made it.

Music
Cappela Romana cond. Alexander Lingas, A Byzantine Emperor at King Henry’s Court: Christmas 1400, London. Very very cool album, love the concept: “Go back in time to 1400, when Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos, seeking foreign aid for besieged Constantinople, spent Christmas in the court of English King Henry IV. […] medieval Byzantine and Sarum chant and royal ceremonial performed by two very different historic choirs, one singing in Greek and the other in Latin, as they celebrated the feast of Christmas at London’s Eltham Palace.” Favorite might be “Kalophonic Polychrónion“, a baritone and a drone, can’t beat it.

James Blackshaw, Unraveling In Your Hands. Twelve-string acoustic meanderings. Second favorite album of the week. I’ll keep this one around for a bit.

Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen Sings Gluck Handel Vivaldi. The sweet melancholy of “Che farò senza Euridice?” is quite lovely.

Arias for Guadagni: The First Modern Castrato. Here’s another version of “Che farò senza Euridice?“.

More Mozart: Concertone KV190, Horn Concerto No. 3 KV447, Piano Concertos No. 2 KV39 & No. 4 KV41. He has a very high floor but didn’t fall in love with any of these recordings.

Movies
Weapons (2025). Fun to watch but nothing lingering afterward. The vignette structure is a welcome change of pace.

28 Years Later. This is a good blend of high and low. References to Bible stuff, Bergman, Hamlet. I like the use of montage to unsettle and give some historical resonance. Appreciate that the father and mother are very imperfect. What’s with movie dystopias leaving all the women in floral dresses?

TV
Line of Duty, s4e2–4. I love Hastings. An imperfect but forcefully moral leader, endlessly disappointed that others set such a low bar for themselves.

SpongeBob Squarepants, s1e1. I’m ready! I’m ready! I’m ready!

Last week I was out of town for 3 days, out in San Francisco for a work conference we were hosting. I’ve been there maybe a half-dozen times now, and I think it’s gotten better each time. Or I’m just different, finding it a bit easier to get on its wavelength.

On the day of the conference itself, I didn’t have formal responsibilities. So just tried to be a welcoming and friendly presence, using the opportunity to strike up conversations with customers, prospects, vendors. Not my natural inclination in a crowd – I was completely fried by the time I went to bed, after the after-after-party – but at the very least, a nice change of pace from the usual.

Two trips to the Pacific coast in the last month, but the view from the plane had me itching for a mountain edition.

Art
The Mellow Paid, oil on canvas by Stuart Davis. The Flatiron, platinum print photograph by Edward Steichen. Departure of Summer, oil on canvas by Man Ray. LA 8, oil on canvas by Shirley Goldfarb.

Books
Sense and Sensibility. Inconsistency is hurting my moment. Need to get back on track.

Running
Heading out of town threw off my rhythm, and cut into my mileage but I rallied for a great long run yesterday. Cooler weather seemed to boost everyone’s mood – lots of greetings and smiling faces. Even the seedier neighborhoods couldn’t deny it.

Around the Web
Oliver Burkeman on threading the beads of life.

Questions to ask when you think need to finish something.

All leaders are GPT-5s.

Policing and prosecution, inside vs. outside of NYC.

The closest you can get to walking around New York City, 1670?.

Music
Invocazione Mariane perf. Andreas Scholl, Alessandro Tampieri with Accademia Bizantina. I really like the countertenor sound. See “Chi mi priega” and “Quis non posset contristari“.

Old Harp Singers of Eastern Tennessee, Old Harp Singing.

Phantoms, This Can’t Be Everything.

Movies
Get Out. Masterpiece, gets better every time.

Challengers. So fun! Sexy, messy, shot in interesting ways, makes dramatic mountains out of molehills. Interesting to watch a movie where I’ve heard the soundtrack before seeing it.

TV
Abbott Elementary, s4e22. I think I’ve seen more season finales than regular season episodes? Always surprised how gently they close things out.

Line of Duty, s4e1. They know how to start with a bang.

Last weekend we made gumbo. Today, pralines. Rounding out the repertoire from my New Orleans side of the family. I’ve been making the oyster dressing for family holidays for a good while now, and I’ve got a decent handle on red beans & rice. These treats used to be reserved for special occasions, or the summer vacations down to Louisiana. Now as an adult, good reminder that I can… just cook them? Whenever I want?

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Had breakfast with a friend this morning and reflected on how nice it is to learn about all the small little tidbits – grad school progress, the new hobby, work challenges, reflections from a recent trip – the collection of small facts (for me) that make their life their life. It’s nice to have a rooting interest in other people’s lives.

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Sometimes reading my Kindle in the dark in bed feels like a very primal experience. Like being near a campfire, calm and quiet, safety and interest nearby, darkness surrounding.

Art
Wooden face mask from the Bembe region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. #49, oil on canvas by Cy Thao. Portrait of Tah-Bo-Ho-Ya, oil on panel by Elbridge Ayer Burbank. Stokrozen quilt by by Ans Schipper-Vermeiren.

Books
The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV. Steadily chipping away, and really enjoying it. So much of progress and coalition-building(/-ruining) can depend on quirks of personality, temperament, reputation.

Running
Much lighter week. Wish I’d spent a bit more time stretching or cross-training or the like, but glad I took a lil’ break.

Around the Web
Frank Chimero took a sabbatical. “There’s a pressure to have noticeable outcomes to life choices like this. I made space, and after 3 months, all I have is a more internalized sense of that space.”

“Asking for help in a way that ppl actually want to help is the number one skill it’s literally the most important skill”.

The Four Players That Span the Entire History of the NBA.

Moderation is not overrated. “One of my rules of internet discourse is that whenever I see people talking about how something is not a “silver bullet” or a “panacea,” I know I’ll need to take the rest with a grain of salt.”

“The death rate from heat in Europe is almost twice the death rate from guns in America”. Not good!

Music
Joe Hsaishi Conducts. Maybe the first time The Desert Music has really clicked for me.

While I’ve been reading The Eagle and the Hart, decided to put on some late 1300s/early 1400s music to keep the mood going. Can’t say I deeply connected with any particular works in these collections, but they’re all great, and a good reminder of how much talent you con find in any niche you care to look into:

• Gothic Voices, Echoes of an Old Hall
• Pro Cantione Antiqua, Ars Brittanica: Old Hall Manuscript, Madrigals, & Lute Songs.

Mozart, Piano Concertos Nos. 9 in E-Flat Major, KV271 “Jenamy” & 12 in A Major, KV414/3585P, Violin Concerto No. 2 in D Major, KV211. The second movement of KV414 stole the show for me.

Disasterpeace, It Follows OST, after watching the movie last week.

Radiohead, Hail to the Thief, (Live Recordings 2003–2009). I’ll take the studio recordings over these, but reliable as always.

Movies
Goodbye, Dragon Inn. Quiet, observant mood-piece, rainy night at a movie theatre during its final screening.

The Invitation (2015). Third viewing. I really like this movie. (The first time I saw it), I liked for plot/suspense reasons. The second time, I appreciated but felt like I was missing something. This time, I connected much more on an emotional/character level. Repeat viewings can pay off!

KPop Demon Hunters. It’s fun! I like how the animation style borrows from manga and such in more expressive moments. Also interesting that the fight scenes are largely “something to do”, and presented as artificially high stakes – we know the heroes are going to survive, so let’s just make it look cool and keep the story going. I know nothing about the musical scene, so I’ll spend some time with the soundtrack, and I think I’ll line up a deep-dive into K-pop in general later on.

TV
Line of Duty, s2e3–5. I love how quickly this show moves along. There’s not a lot of meditative artistry or glamour. Just the facts, and messy people, and turning the screws a little tighter. Great interrogation scenes recently.

Words of Wisdom
“Skills expand the effectiveness of your kit but they don’t substitute for its essential components. The best system is one where gear and training are aligned, with neither one of them overcompensating for the other.”

This morning I spent a couple hours listening to Bach, loudly, while I puttered around the house. As good as earbuds or headphones get, there’s nothing that can replace big speakers moving the air, recreating the space and reverb and texture from when it was recorded. (Of course, the extension of the argument is to go to a more live shows…)

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I’m enjoying cooking as a creative outlet lately. I think I always have – thinking back to attempting scrambled eggs with a childhood best friend after every sleepover (surely one more spice will make them good?) – I just never point my time or energy in that direction on a regular basis. This weekend: an apple tart, and savory quiche. I think my “I don’t care about cooking” identity might be helping. I’m not invested that much in the end result, as long as the vision is clear and ideas are flowing and the process feels fun. Probably better this way.

Art
Spring, study for the Jusélius Mausoleum frescoes, tempera on canvas by Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Evocation d’une forme humaine, lunaraire, spectrale, sculpture in polished bronze by Hans Jean Arp.

Books
Wolf Hall. Predicting a DNF, but slight chance I’ll dip in again.

On the Calculation of Volume, Book 1. A woman relives the same day over and over. Will probably finish this today. (Will I do it again when I wake up?)

Running
More morning runs over the last week, even managed to squeeze one in before I went to the office. If I’m going to wake up naturally at 5am for no reason at all, might as well take advantage of it.

Around the Web
Why is Rear Window so tense?

37 takeaways from 200 hours with Bach. “How much of Bach do you know? You’ve tasted only a morsel of the world’s biggest cake.”

A narrative on fulfilling jury duty in DeKalb County, Georgia.

“Managers don’t often think about their power collectively, but you have it and you can use it.“

A Treatise on AI Chatbots Undermining the Enlightenment.

How AI, Healthcare, and Labubu Became the American Economy. “We need to live in the future to build the future!”

100 years of Art Deco: a movement comes of age. (Thanks, James)

Music
Balimaya Project, When the Dust Settles. Tight jazz / west African blend. “For Aziz” is good; the riff in “Anka Tulon” got stuck in my head for a couple days.

Boards of Canada, The Campfire Headphase. I was vaguely aware of this act two decades ago, but never gave it any time. So now my 2025 ears can’t help hear “chill vibes to study to”.

Two albums of classical guitarist Jason Vieaux playing Bach: Lute Works, Vol. 1 and Violin Works, Vol. 2. Can’t go wrong.

Movies
Smile. Had to watch because I heard the second was even better. It’s good, and the lead is so good, but couldn’t help thinking the roots-in-trauma horror is getting a little worn out.

The Princess Diaries. What an absolute treasure. So glad I saw this.

Smile 2. Thematically richer than the first, maybe less haunting, with another intense, capitivating lead performance. Undermined a little bit here and there with repetitious moments, but it’s good.

TV
Ballard, s1e7–8.

CSI: Miami, s7e3.

Line of Duty, s1e1–2. Off to the races.

Last weekend I went back home to Atlanta. After a 6am flight, the first order of business: breakfast order at Waffle House. Felt good – and strange – to be back in my old stomping grounds downtown.

Second mission: a visit to the High Museum for their exhibition Faith Ringgold: Seeing Children, which was just about perfect. Especially liked the low-mounted art on the walls, and the storytelling area where they had a ceiling-mounted video of Faith Ringgold reading Tar Beach on a loop. (The opening sentence is one of the greatest in all literature.) The collection for Kim Chong Hak, Painter of Seoraksan was a really nice surprise. Beautifully lush, dense plant-tangled landscapes.

Aside from that, lots of time with family, seeing our local 700-foot waterfall, picking blueberries in the back yard, pondering “Western Art“, playing on the floor with paper collage and Legos, eating too much, and sipping evening coffees.

Going back home made me fall in love a little more. Seeing people care about someone you love is inspiring. Like when friends show up to your amateur concert or sports events. It’s validating. You want to live up to their encouragement.

Art
The Conversion of St. Paul, a bas relief in stone and glass by Lumen Martin Winter. Ran by this one on the face of St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church, had to pause to admire for a moment. A Maori feather cloak (kahu huruhuru) in a checkerboard pattern.

Books
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik, interesting twist on Rumpelstiltskin folklore.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. Only ~20% into it, but so far so good.

Running
Lovely long long run to and through Central Park yesterday, along with Riverside Park and the Hudson River Greenway. (It’s so nice to be able to pop into a deli for a mid-run snack.) The biggest breakthrough was bringing some running shoes to Atlanta and making sure I got a few miles in. It’s more the commitment than the value of the workout itself.

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
Geo Gerard biked every road in Atlanta and shares an accompanying photo collection: All the Roads Taken.

Dan Pelzer read a lot of books and kept a hand-written list for decades.

A man who puts jet engines on things.

What 300 Years of Firewood Prices Say About the Economy. Odd Lots is such a good podcast.

Indonesia climbs the value chain and The only thing worse than sweatshops is no sweatshops. A lesson here in not being too picky about how the poor grow wealthier. There is so much at stake!

“One big benefit of traveling is the diversity of places you can see. But another big benefit — not to be neglected — is the diversity of eras you can sample. I am so, so glad I saw what those places were like in the late 1980s, China most of all and also the hill tribes. No history books can compensate for that. So that is a very good reason to travel NOW. And to travel to places that are going to change a lot.“

“Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.”

What if you could search every visible word on New York City’s streets?

One Photographer’s 50 Year Quest to Capture the Chrysler Building.

Music
Hamid Al Shaeri, The SLAM! Years: 1983–1988 (Habibi Funk 018). Like this one quite a bit! “Tew’idni Dom” (I love the key modulations) and “Ayonha” made it on my “2025 Bangers” playlist.

Doctor 3, Danilo Rea, Blue. Clean modern piano jazz.

corto.alto, Bad With Names. Horn-forward beats-lounge.

Mulatu Astatke, Mulatu Steps Ahead. The usual jazz/latin/funk blend, see “Mulatu’s Mood“.

Yamaneko, Pixel Wave Embrace. Video game-y bleeps and bloops, just a little grimey.

Sophye Soliveau, Initiation. Soul + harp, hard to go wrong. “Initiation II – Wonder Why” and “Simple Pleasures“.

Movies
Predator (1987). Still enjoyable. Arnold was so much slimmer back then. (Previously.)

Woody Woodpecker. I have my nephew to blame for this one. It’s not good.

The Wild Robot. A rewatch, another nephew selection. It’s fine! (Previously.)

Los cronocrímenes (Timecrimes). Pleasantly surprised with this little time-travel thriller.

The Illusionist. Good old-fashioned magical romance. Would pair well with The Prestige.

TV
Peaky Blinders, s1e1–2

Ballard, s4–6

I got a photo from family recently. My grandpa was a lifelong craftsman, mechanic, carpenter. On the day he died, three tools had been left out on the table saw in the barn. A combo square to plan and check; a notched wooden guide to steer boards safely over the blade; a screwdriver for the hundred little tasks that screwdrivers are useful for. Measure, plan, push forward, adjust.

Art
Exhibition coming soon to the High Museum: Faith Ringgold: Seeing Children. See you in ATL!

Man of the Night, statue in bronze by Germaine Richier. The Tilled Field, oil on canvas by Joan Miró.

Books
The Story of King Arthur and His Knights. Maybe it’s because I’m too familiar with them, but surprised by how… dry? factual? the stories were. Like reading very straightforward reporting. Not bad, though. Just not as dramatic as you’d think in this telling.

It. DNF. I’ve never read Stephen King before! I think I should look to his other, shorter works.

Between Two Fires. Historical Christian horror? Interesting! Getting a better sense of the time period (Black Death-era France), how desperate and destructive and confusing it must have been.

Running
I’m acclimating to summer weather. This weekend I continued my irregular series of running to the end of various subway lines, with a journey east through Forest Park to the Jamaica–179th Street end of the F line. There’s something interesting on the other side of every intersection.

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
Captchas in textiles.

“Your time and energy are the key bottlenecks in your life, and thus choices are always being made.”

What Happened to Working Your Way Up from the Mailroom? “The measure of how efficiently talent is allocated in a society is how young you are when your dreams are crushed.”

“We learned this about platforms a long time ago: following the old newspaper schematic, they aren’t the printing presses, but rather the assignment editors.”

“‘What about x, y, z? They’re really pushing the boundaries of fiction as a medium.’ I don’t want to be mean, but I doubt it.”

Is embracing AI intellectual or anti-intellectual? and the value of academic silos.

Invite knowledge through randomness with WikiRadio and WikiTok.

“The basic fact is that you cannot defend democracy if you cannot meaningfully contest a wider range of Senate seats.”

Music
Two more from The Knife this week:

• Deep Cuts. I like “You Make Me Like Charity” and videogame melancholy of “Behind the Bushes“.
• Silent Shout. “Silent Shout” feels like it has a lot of early synthwave Kavinsky-type sounds percolating in there. Not a complaint. “Like a Pen” is great, too.

Movies
Avengers: Infinity War. Captain America’s phone has an Atlanta area code! The deaths of Vision and Spider-Man hit hard. Respect for movies willing to end on a sour note. Well done.

Gosford Park. I’ll just echo everything I wrote about my first viewing. Still one of my favorites seen in 2024.

TV
Couples Therapy, s4e1–6. What an addictive show! And so rare for me to feel emotional about any reality TV. So much hurt that goes so deep.

The X-Files, s4e20 “Small Potatoes“. Another good silly one.

Dept. Q, s1e4–5.

Feels like work kinda took over this week. Demanding mostly in just raw hours, but not really difficulty. Crawled to the finish (a walk to our favorite pizza place) and had a wild Friday napping on the couch. A good life, all in all.

Art
Harlem Street Scene, screenprint by Jacob Lawrence. On the Bank, oil on canvas by Frederick Carl Frieseke. White Moving Forms on Black Background (TNT), sculpture in painted metal and wood by Jean Tinguely.

Books
Rainbows End. A bit more than halfway through, hoping I can pick up steam and move on to others. Winter’s Heart. Other Thing by Craig Mod.

Running
Good mix this week: weekday evening trail runs, morning runs before work, and exploring some new streetsin Dumbo and Gowanus on my long run.

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
“Let’s let them be young and have fun, even if we cringe at it.”

The Most Valuable Commodity in the World is Friction.

A family that makes art together…

“Kids won’t flatter your ego. If it’s not fun, you’ll know.”

Music
A few more with Sō Percussion and…

• Bryce Dessner, Music for Wood and Strings.
• Steven Mackey, It Is Time.

BLAAP, Of the Trees, Freddy Todd, Volcanology. I like “LIFE CONTROL“, puts a little snarl on my face.

Movies
In the Cut. A sick romance and murder mystery all wrapped up. I didn’t love it but I feel like it’s so fresh and disorientingly different I eventually will.

X. Horror on the farm. Interesting commentary on ageism.

Trap. Good to see Hartnett explore so many moods and facets. Falls flat in the last 10-20 minutes or so, but plenty of fun beforehand.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. A little flabby and dour. It’s lost the spark of silliness that makes the franchise great. But the biggest setpieces were as good as you’ll find.

TV
Reacher, s3e5. Teresa!

Bosch, s1e6.

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.

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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.

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

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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™.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

For the first time in a long time, I didn’t make it to midnight on New Year’s Eve. Jetlag took me down early, and I was too drowsy to set the 11:50pm alarm I’d told myself I would just a little while earlier. But I woke up and took a walk in the park and saw a new sunrise on familiar streets, a celebration in its own way. I appreciate how many good things came my way in 2024 – wedding, graduating school, new job, family visits – and plenty of other small victories here and there. What do I want from 2025?

“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.” (via)

Art
I fulfilled my 2024 week 51 hope of seeing the exhibition of Gee’s Bend quilts at the Nicelle Beauchene Gallery. Worth clicking through their gallery there, but to call out a couple favorites:

• Marlene Bennett Jones’s “Gee’s Bend Pockets (2024)“, made me think of barns and corduroy farmland.
• I like how the checkerboard quilt from Rita Mae Pettway, “My Way (2017)” used a few different shades in the lighter-colored squares, and the overstitching guides your eyes across.
• The photo of “Star Bright (2023)” by Mary Hall, Doris Mooney, and Elaine Spencer doesn’t quite do it justice – the ruching gives it a three-dimensionality that only translates in person.

Running
Returned to running after 10 days away while vacationing. Felt good to get back out there. Now I’ve got a three-month window to prep for a 20-mile trail race in early March.

Books
The Path of Daggers, finally done. I’ll wait a while before tackling the next in the series. Glad to have momentum again.

Middlemarch. Only a few pages in. I’ve heard raves and I’ve heard rants. What will I think?

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
I’m loving Issue 1 of The Metrograph. Great collection. From the “Movies Come To This Place for Magic” interview, a couple of fun excerpts:

“Michael Weber: We believe that as magicians, we don’t keep our secrets from our audiences, we keep secrets for our audiences. […]
Derek DelGaudio: […] There’s this dictum, ‘Magicians guard an empty safe.’ It’s about the disappointment laymen experience when they discover a secret is something simple or banal, like a mirror.”

And when telling a story, magic and drama are somewhat at odds:

“There is a fundamental difference between drama and magic. Drama aims to keep the audience wondering, ‘What happens next?’. But an audience’s reaction to magic is the opposite, it’s reflective. They see something magical and ask, ‘Wait, what just happened?'”

India has too few tourists and how to visit India for normies. I should move it higher on my list?

Enjoyment is a skill. You should buy into this idea, and I like a lot of the suggestions here. “Sometimes, when I encounter creative work by someone from a location I’m not familiar with, I’ll go on Google Street View and take a poke around a neighborhood they’re from, or might be from. I feel like it gives me hints about the lived texture that they’re drawing from or commenting on.”

Learning to Slow Down Time.

Growing a Human: The First 30 Weeks. I appreciate these reflections on something I’ll never experience first-hand.

Using LLMs and Cursor to become a finisher. There will be earth-shattering discoveries and breakthroughs to come, but AI will also unlock a lot of progress by unlocking small, incremental progress that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

Music
The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis. Funky jazzy big-band. Mostly didn’t click with me but I liked the downtempo “Railroad Tracks Home“.

Mary Halvorson, Cloudward. Angular jazz ensemble. I like the layers in “Tailhead“.

Movies
Alien: Romulus. I have mixed-to-positive feelings, but it is decidedly an Alien movie, and delivers everything you’d expect. I love that our main android is not especially smart. He’s slow, loyal, vulnerable, needs babysitting. “Let me borrow your robot” is a great starting point. Too bad some of the digital effects looked pretty cheap, the sweeping space vistas for one, but most especially and tragically the rival android – really poor choice. I struggled with the young cast, too. They seem too fresh and healthy for indentured laborers in a mining colony? Nice touch with the dipping birds and the canary in the mine. Lots of fan service, cliches, and echoes, but it ties into the mythology well, and it’s all fun!

TV
The X-Files, s4e2 “Home“. Maybe the grossest, most uncomfortable episodeinbreds, gross, so dark

CSI: Miami, s6e9. Calleigh’s life is threatened! I’m astounded by the number and length of time-killing filler scenes – their main use of the crime lab.

Cross, s1e7–8. What a stressful ending! Great wrap-up, and I hope we get another season. The fake-out with the sedatives and faulty execution was brutal. I love the occasional swerves into Shaft mode, in music and tone.

Words of Wisdom
“never underestimate the power of going somewhere beautiful and just sitting there“