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The Year of the Mulligan: my thoughts on the new year, exactly! thisisindexed.com/2020/12/c…
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We are so enamored with this idea of the heroic that we are always looking for ways to attribute heroism to everyday people so we might get just a bit colder to the best version of ourselves, so the distance between who we are and who we aspire to be might become narrower.
- Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist 💬
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Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, and happy seven days until 2021 for us all!
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Just heard an NPR reporter, while interviewing a correspondent, offhandedly refer to Trump’s latest veto as “the upside down”. My geek heart swooned!
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I’d considered buying a new laptop in 2021. This article makes a strong case for not doing so;
How and why I stopped buying new laptops | LOW←TECH MAGAZINE
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Your Thursday holiday whimsy: The Blob Opera! artsandculture.google.com/experimen…
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In many ways, likability is very elaborate lie, a performance, a code of conduct dictating the proper way to be. Characters who don’t follow this code become unlikable. Critics who criticize a character’s unlikability cannot necessarily be faulted. They are merely expressing a wider cultural malaise with all things unpleasant, all things that dare to breach the norm of social acceptability.
Roxane Gay is talking about “unlikeable” women in Not Here To Make Friends, but it’s really applicable to other groups like other cultures, ASD, queer and genderqueer people, and more. 💬📚
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As close to the beautiful snow as I’d like to be.
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It’s my sister’s birthday today. I wish I could have surprised her for it in person. Still, happy birthday, Mica! 🎂
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Also, that movie has an original social lubrication I’ve never seen or read of before: seasonal scents packaged like smelling salts. If it’s supposed to be fall on Earth, they’d wave a vial smelling like fall under the nose the way others would puff a cigar or sip a martini.
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Just finished Ikarie XB-1, a 1963 Czech scifi movie which holds up very well today. I especially liked the commentary on American culture in the middle of the film. Apparently the American edit cut that scene out? 🎬
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A bit of silly joy for your Friday: pointerpointer.com
It works on mobile and desktop.
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Some evenings, whatever your evening plans, you just have to sit in a comfy chair and relax to some good music.
I hope you all have a music-filled and relaxing night also!
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My guitar homework for the week. He wants me to practice actually singing the Dylan song. 😬
🎵 🎸
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Two aesthetics have clashed with each other for a very long time: one that recommends a total rejection of real life and the other that claims to reject everything that is not real life. Neither, however, describes reality, and both result in the same lie and the suppression of art. Right-wing academia ignores the miserable conditions that left-wing academia puts to use. And in both cases, misery increases while art is obliterated.
- Albert Camus, “Create Dangerously” 📚 💬
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A good day today was capped with “On the Rocks”, the Sofia Coppola film with Rashida Jones and Bill Murray. It is delightful, with strong performances and a slightly ridiculous script that does a good job of putting you in Laura’s mind. Highly recommend! 📽
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Every time I see Zoë Keating perform “Optimist”, it’s with layers of big, bright, rich sounds. It’s beautiful and uplifting.
I fell in love with the song on her album Into The Trees, though. There it is a spare, minimalist, pure thing. It’s still uplifting, but it has two parts where the song stops and slows, for the upbeat portion to rise through and carry on with - like an optimist carrying on despite a setback.
I wonder if Keating ever performs the album version, or if the sumptuous version was her original vision that she lets out on live performances but didn’t think worked on the album.
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A chilly, rainy day has me stuck inside with chores. There’s a Zoë Keating concert to stream tonight, though, so it’s not a completely dull day! 🎵
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Writing holiday cards for people I’m on a weekly social Zoom call with. They don’t know they’re getting cards. It feels wholesomely sneaky. 🎁
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Finished “Create Dangerously: The Power and Responsibility of the Artist”, a triptych of essays by Albert Camus. Now I’m going to read it again, so I can savor every bon mot of insight. He delivered this piece in 1957, but it could have been written last year. 📚
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Finished The Atlantic’s Daily Crossword and man, some of those clues. You have to really stretch to connect “Print Maker?” to “PAW”. It’s good practice for the upcoming Mystery Hunt, though!
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Nick Cave, everyone: 💬
Of course, there is much in our world that is in need of change, to be set to rights, and clearly humanity is complex, conflicted and full of faults, but at this moment in time, when our very existence hangs in the balance, we need to come together not just in good faith and consolation, but also in a spirit of creativity and invention. Our existence depends upon offering the best of ourselves. Negativity, cynicism and resentment will not do. ‘We must love one another or die.’
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Watching Rise of the Nazis: Politics on PBS. Not 20 minutes in, and the parallels are stunning. 📽
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For those who need the catharsis of watching things burn: hey.science/dumpster-…
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When Politics isn’t All Personal - Insight
Once again, Zeynep Tufeki zeros in on the key point. Summing up her essay on why dismissing Trump voters as hopeless racists is mistaken:
But I don’t think that means there is no hope, ever, of appealing to groups to whom others are trying to appeal based on racism, or, more accurately, on ethno-nationalism populism. What we’ve seen in 2020 is that people do respond, in complicated ways certainly, to what they perceive as both paycheck and economic security issues and cultural affinity. Neither demographics nor turnout patterns are destiny. Trying to change people’s hearts may or may not be futile in the personal realm, but there’s no need to determine that conclusively. People respond, sometimes dramatically, to policies as they perceive and experience them. The personal is political but all politics isn’t always that personal.
💬
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