Category: Posts
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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…
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Maybe join a book club instead
Adam Mastroianni, in an article on the myths of political hatred: I think there is one very good reason to cap our political hatred: it makes us miserable. Not because we’re always coming to blows with our political enemies—the data suggests that doesn’t happen very often—but because we’re always thinking about them. I’ve seen perfectly…
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On the arts as blunt instruments
Alan Jacobs, considering a John Adams letter on the usefulness of the arts: Everyone in power, or aspiring to power, in this country seems to be studying Politics and War, though they will sometimes cover that study with a flimsy disguise. On the so-called Left we see surveillance moralism (and often enough the sexualization of…
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Links of the moment
An ongoing series Why Chicago’s skyline is so well designed. In praise of microhistories. Hark, Mr. Autumn Man has returned! Well hello Neptune, you big, beautiful, ringed ice giant.
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Live Text, Reader View, No-Signup Tools
Three techie things I’m loving. 1. Live Text Live Text, available in iOS 15 and beyond, feels not far off from magical. The ability to copy text from photos or through the camera app has completely transformed my book notetaking process as a print-book partisan but digital notetaker. I can just point the camera at…