“Stanley is very monastic. He’s a great beard scratcher. He thinks; he rubs his beard. He expresses himself quietly. I can’t say he’s reasonable . . . There has to be a certain unreasonableness in any serious creative work.” -Saul Bass

UK Government shutting down social media for kids when they should be shutting down @letterboxd for everyone.

« Dans ta vie tu rencontreras beaucoup de cons. S'ils te blessent, dis-toi que c'est la bêtise qui les pousse à te faire du mal. Ca t'évitera de répondre à leur méchanceté. Car il n'y a rien de pire au monde que l'amertume et la vengeance. » Marjane Satrapi

Bernard Fleetwood-Walker

Boards of Canada Day > Canada Day

Talk show hosts against narcissism.

Momcore exterior bulging Air sheath 80s executive interior just so over-engineering. “It has sliders, buttons, and cut outs!” A BMW i8 from 2015 mogs this.

The Utah “book burning” debate would be easier to take seriously if the people waving The Bluest Eye at the camera had actually read it. The novel is, in part, about a child being terrorized by her father. Removing it from a school library isn’t going to fell the Republic. Given recent literacy statistics, we should cheer if a child picks up any book at all. But the people arguing on “principled” grounds appear to have only a political bone to pick. They couldn’t care less about children actually reading. youtu.be/24nvp9cXjmQ?si=eqjo…

In Canada, the government will subsidize any little idea that pops into your head and allow it to be published. In this groundbreaking Canadian work, fentanyl poisoning is seen as a positive boon. I haven’t received my copy by mailgoose yet, but I hope that the book won’t go too deeply into the Canadian “happily opt out of life” system and how it boosts kidney donation metrics.

I have no evidence beyond experience but i suspect the drop in grades reflects in part a cultural shift away from intellectual challenge. Rigor isn’t valued or incentivized. Demanding teachers are disparaged as “traditional” and incapable of serving the “whole child.”

After 15 years in hiding, Tom Waits emerged from the dirt to collaborate with Massive Attack (?) on an embarrassingly tepid anti-war song. Here are some of the lyrics:

Sometimes I put up an old piece of mine because I still like it. I wrote this out of gratitude to some people who know who they are. They may have saved my father's life. Maybe mine too. Walter Kirn: Confessions of an Ex-Mormon | The New Republic newrepublic.com/article/1049…

Texas, 1983 | Wim Wenders

So happy to see that @nyrbclassics is reprinting this gem of a book about obsession, imagination, and random chance. It is an absolute delight. That my old prof Ben Marcus is writing the foreword is great as well. It’s a shame that Ben presumably gave up on writing. His “The Age of Wire and String” is a haunted music box.

I think I’ve finally found the one New Yorker article designed and executed to appeal to no one. newyorker.com/news/the-new-y…

No matter the tools, the algorithmic assumptions, or the amount of training data, you will never capture a human soul. You can never extrapolate out the endless possibilities and mutations. It will only ever be mimicry.

Interesting that @PTI could eventually become an AI-produced show once the hosts age out. With thousands of hours of footage, all you’d need is to input the daily sports news and let AI generate opinions in their signature styles. Sports opinions are cliché-ridden, and the show has a rigid, predictable format. It’s an ideal candidate for AI decrepitude. I imagine that there will be a market for continuing on this kind of comfort viewing.

Cityscape by Tomoaki Okada

Leaving @sundancefest for the last time, and I think about the great stage performances that were never captured. Those moments that will only be carried by the few that witnessed it. No one could capture the magic of Park City during the peak and before the fall. But you’re sure as hell not going to recreate it somewhere else. This year was tepid. Plain. Unimaginative. Obvious. It ends for me with a chorus of mindless chanting in the streets. The antithesis of creativity. But it’s best to end it all with a final whimper. I found lovers and business partners here. Lit Patricia Arquette’s cigarette in a snowstorm. Told the man from Artisan to buy Blair Witch. And I gleefully spread Covid to the world. Not a bad record.

My greatest discovery so far: The world is a tragedy to those who feel, a comedy to those who think. Most people neither think nor feel. Patricia Highsmith, Journal, May 1942 she left behind some 8,000 handwritten pages in 37 work notebooks,cahiers 1938-1992,18 personal diaries

this was the last hurrah honestly