Year: 2022
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Links of the moment
An ongoing series The opening of Top Gun: Maverick as a perfect pop song. Power to the Ukrainian librarians. Amazing photos from NASA’s Artemis I mission to the moon. A short history of the Avatar Papyrus logo and the amazing SNL sketch that mocked it. No more very.
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Recent Views
More photography here and on my Instagram. A sunbeamed leaf as seen through our car windshield: The yin and yang of a backyard bonfire remnant: At work in his corner office: Cloudy with a chance of a refill: The bubbles are back, and they’re multiplying: Mr. 3 Year Old is eager to shovel at the…
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My own ‘Back to the Future: The Musical’
I finally listened to the original cast recording of Back to the Future: The Musical, which is making its Broadway debut in June 2023. I can’t say I loved every song, though the new showtuned rendition of “Power of Love” is most welcome: It also reminded me that years ago I started making my own…
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Those tender trenches
Wanted to spotlight something from A.O. Scott’s interview with Steven Spielberg, where he talks about collaborating with screenwriter Tony Kushner on The Fabelmans: It’s hard to hold someone’s hand over Zoom, but Tony did a good job in giving me the kind of comfort I needed when we were tapping into moments in my life,…
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Movie trailers ruin movies
Alissa Wilkinson preaches the truth about movie trailers: At best they’ll just show you stuff you probably knew anyway, or don’t need to know — who’s in the movie, what’s on the soundtrack, the basic plot setup. Maybe the look or the tone or the vibe. But trailers aren’t designed to give you a glimpse…
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Links of the moment
An ongoing series The latest annual Vanity Fair/Billie Eilish interview is out. How Peter Jackson’s AI is remixing The Beatles. An ode to the “prescient obsolescence” of cassette tapes. Ban TikTok.
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Librerapy: the life-changing magic of library browsing
As parents of littles know, going to the library with kids is a very different experience than going solo. (“Traveling with young kids is not a vacation, it is a trip.”) When in chaperone mode, if I’m lucky I can wrangle the three year old for just long enough to let me quickly browse the…
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Media of the moment
An ongoing series Athena. Come for the gangbusters opening 10 minutes—stay for the tense, heart-pounding drama of Children of Men-meets-The Battle of Algiers in a French apartment complex. (Streaming on Netflix.) The End of Education by Neil Postman. My third Postman book after Amusing Ourselves to Death and Technopoly. Would probably rank it below those…
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Lord of the Rewatch
I just finished a rewatch of the Lord of the Rings trilogy extended editions, something I was saving for after I finished season one of The Rings of Power. And I’m glad I did because I was able to appreciate the trilogy that much more, with the events of Middle-earth’s earlier age as captured in…
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Links of the moment
An ongoing series A coder recreated the “digital rain” from The Matrix. A flautist playing Lord of the Rings music in a giant tunnel. Folding clothes is a scam.
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Recent Views
More photography here and on my Instagram. The view of the capitol building in Madison from the Madison Children’s Museum rooftop: Mr. 3 Year Old and his cousin on the slide at the Madison zoo: Stumbled upon this view atop a slide at a nearby suburban park: Ascending a magically wooded tunnel of stairs adjacent…
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In praise of microhistories
Clive Thompson on the appeal of microhistories: When you drill down deeply into a single subject, you nearly always realize: Holy crap, this is more complex than I’d have thought. This is true of just about any subject, right? And it’s exactly the opposite feeling you get from a “big” book, which strives to make…