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Infinitesimal Deviations

In War and Peace – “the greatest of all novels” – Tolstoy “shows us how our minds work even though memory omits what makes no sense.” Gary Saul Morson explains:

When Prince Andrei’s wife is dying in labor, he waits in the next room listening to her pitiful, animal screams. He feels unendurable guilt as she suffers. At last he hears the shriek of an infant, and his first thought is “why have they taken a baby in there?” He is so focused on his wife’s suffering that he forgets—only for a split second, of course—why she is suffering. He will never remember this absurd first reaction, immediately corrected; once again, only Tolstoy would notice it.

Miscellany

The most prolific art thief who ever lived? Over at GQ, Stéphane Breitwieser reveals his secrets. “In the annals of art crime, it’s hard to find someone who has stolen from ten different places. By the time the calendar flips to 2000, by Breitwieser’s calculations, he’s nearing 200 separate thefts and 300 stolen objects. For six years, he’s averaged one theft every two weeks. One year, he is responsible for half of all paintings stolen from French museums.”

Kelly Faircloth on “the steamy, throbbing history of romance novel covers.” (Side note: I discovered a new word the other day – yonic – which is basically the female equivalent of phallic. Don’t ask me how I learned about it.)

Wind turbines kill more people than nuclear power plants. “[W]hen it comes to generating power for billions of people,” writes Michael Shellenberger, “it turns out that producing solar and wind collectors, and spreading them over large areas, has vastly worse impacts on humans and wildlife alike.”

Stop! Grammar Time!

Can we talk about the word belated?

Here’s how The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (fourth edition) defines it: “Having been delayed; done or sent too late….”

And here’s what The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has to say: “Delayed; tardy; coming (too) late.”

So when you’re a dick and you miss someone’s birthday, don’t say, “Happy belated birthday!” The birthday wasn’t late; you were. The correct way to handle the situation, then, is to say, “Belated happy birthday!” And then to not be a dick the next time it comes around.

“Sometimes, it’s the beauty of what you can’t hear that makes a sound.”

Mark Hollis has died. The Talk Talk front man was only 64. Two of the band’s albums – 1988’s Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, from 1991 – are genuine masterpieces, and sound as fresh and uncompromising today as they did when they were new. (I’ve been listening to both on repeat since I arrived at the office this morning.)

If you’re interested in what sort of impact Hollis had on pop music, this article over at the Guardian features musicians offering their thoughts on “his songs, enigmatic spirit and musical vision.” But honestly, all you’ve got to do is listen. You’ll understand.

RIP.

AI, AI…Oh

Good news! Artificial intelligence will never replace artists. “A machine could not surpass us massively in creativity,” writes Harvard philosophy professor Sean Dorrance Kelly, “because either its achievement would be understandable, in which case it would not massively surpass us, or it would not be understandable, in which case we could not count it as making any creative advance at all.”

Bad news! It appears to be getting easier to create deepfakes, which involves machines learning by example. “In a grim reflection on our species,” writes Ben Sixsmith, “this tends to involve anonymous netizens creating videos in which the faces of celebrities have been grafted onto the bodies of porn stars.”

So, basically, ScarJo was right. The Internet is pretty much just “a vast wormhole of darkness that eats itself.”

Poetry Break

EVEN SUCH IS TIME
Sir Walter Raleigh*

Even such is Time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wander’d all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.

*Written October 29, 1618, the night before he was beheaded for conspiring against King James I.

What Is Cool?

Did you know that there are hierarchies to cool? In a brilliant and incisive (not to mention hilarious) essay over at the Sydney Review of Books, Chris Fleming breaks it down for us:

The Velvet Underground are probably cooler than the Ramones, but the Ramones are much cooler than Pink Floyd; Pink Floyd are cooler than Coldplay (the name is misleading), and Coldplay are cooler than Nickelback. And there are bands even less cool than Nickelback, although I can’t bring any to mind right at this minute.

He also knows a thing or two about the “Aspiring Cool of Instagram,” whose “Romantic Injunction” is “Watch me not caring about whether or not you watch me (but please do watch me).” And then there’s the humblebrag: “Look at me being incredibly successful even though I’m surprised and amused by this attention and – believe me – I’m not even slightly invested in it – even so, check me out. (Repeatedly if you have to. I do.)”

Cool, it turns out, is elusive. “We can’t reliably predict its path,” writes Fleming, “because it never announces its itinerary.” So I guess Tower of Power was on to something way back in 1973:

You done even went and found you a guru
In your effort to find you a new you
And maybe even managed 
To raise your conscious level
As you striving to find the right road
There’s one thing you should know
What’s hip today
Might become passé

Finally, a warning: “To compound difficulties…cool is largely an unspeakable art and its artisans will rarely admit to practicing it – to being cool, that is. Yet the converse isn’t necessarily true: denying that you’re cool doesn’t make you cool.”

SMDH

Just when I think things couldn’t get any stupider, I see that John Wayne is trending on Twitter. John Wayne, the American actor who died forty years ago.

Why?

Glad you asked. Somebody apparently discovered the infamous 1971 Playboy interview in which Wayne said some mean things – words so shockingly offensive that Twitter includes this warning when you click on the link:

So now, amidst much wailing and gnashing of teeth, the social justice mobs have turned the outrage generators up to 11. John Wayne, you see, is a “straight up piece of shit” because he wasn’t sufficiently woke. Glad to know that the pressing problems of the world – you know, poverty, tyranny, war…those sorts of things – have been solved and all that remains is to purge history of distasteful people.

As usual, Bridget Phetasy gets it right: “The definition of privilege is having so much free time and money,” she tweets, “you can spend your day online bitching about a John Wayne interview from 1971.”

Reality Check

If you’re in the midst of an existential crisis right now, you’re probably not going to want to watch this. If, on the other hand, you think stars and planets and light years are cool – and you don’t mind feeling a little insignificant – check it out.

So. Still think everyone is special?

Science FTW

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences includes a pretty interesting finding: “Listening to the music you love,” says Laura Ferreri, one of the study’s authors, “will make your brain release more dopamine, a crucial neurotransmitter for humans’ emotional and cognitive functioning.”

Which raises an even more interesting question – for me, anyway. Since dopamine “contributes to feelings of pleasures and satisfaction,” and since the music I love spans everything from Tuvan throat singing to Throbbing Gristle, does that mean I derive more pleasure and satisfaction out of life than, say, someone with more pedestrian musical tastes?

Just wondering, that’s all.

Depressing News of the Day

Juho Sarvikas is the chief product officer for HMD Global, the company producing “classic” mobile phones like the Nokia 3310. In 2019.

Why is anyone still making dumphones, you ask? Because people are buying them. “Digital well-being is a concrete area now,” says Sarvikas. “When you want to go into detox mode or if you want to be less connected, we want to be the company that has the toolkit for you.”

So, basically, when you’re ready to say “No more” to our over-reaching tech overlords, there’s a $1 billion company ready to monetize your decision.

Surprisingly, though, that’s not the most worrisome thing about this article.

Quote of the Day

“Art” and the “artist” – by which we mean an autonomous realm of art and a specialist practitioner in music, painting, literature, whatever – are the historical creation of the division of labour and the existence of surplus value within the host society. Subsistence economies may have individuals who tell stories, sing songs, draw drawings, but they don’t have artists.

Ian Bostridge, from Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession (2014)

Public Service Announcement

Because I can’t think of anything in particular to write about today – and I have approximately 386 deadlines to meet before the end of the week – I’ll just list some random things I’ve been enjoying of late, in the hope that maybe you’ll find some pleasure in them as well:

Rob the Mob is streaming on Netflix, and it’s delightful. Likewise The Kominsky Method.

You haven’t had a croissant until you’ve had a Grain Shed croissant. It really is that simple.

Ozric Tentacles – specifically Strangeitude and Erpland – are blowing my mind.

Like a good podcast? You’ll love Aquarium Drunkard’s Transmissions.

Terraforming Mars is the perfect antidote to our current statewide Snowpocalypse.™

Snow Days

“It’s time to share the spotlight, Midwest,” writes Jonathan Glover in yesterday’s Spokesman-Review. “Frigid temperatures, heavy snow and biting winds are coming to the Inland Northwest.”

What do do this weekend, then? Why, pour yourself a nice single malt (or whip up an Irish coffee), cozy on up to the fireplace, and head over to CNN for some investigative reporting that will blow your mind. Here’s how Part 1 – “The Circus Singer and the Godfather of Soul” – begins:

Two years ago, I got a phone call from a woman who sang in the circus. She said she could prove that James Brown had been murdered. I met her on a hot day near Chicago, where the big top was rising and the elephants were munching hay. The singer’s name was Jacquelyn Hollander. She was 61 years old. She lived in a motor home with two cats and a Chihuahua named Pickles. She had long blond hair and a pack of Marlboros. She said she was not crazy, nor was she lying, and she hoped I would write her story, because it might save her life.

Or maybe it would get her killed.… 

I mean, how could you not want to read this?

And points to CNN for creating a really well-done multi-media experience: In addition to some compelling writing, there are scads of photos, audio and video clips, and links to some 50 supporting documents. Sixteen people contributed to the production, and it shows.

Swissted Santa

One of my favorite gifts from this past Christmas was Swissted: Vintage Rock Posters Remixed and Reimagined. The creation of New York graphic designer Mike Joyce, this compendium contains 200 ready-to-frame posters. Joyce masterfully blends vintage rock, punk, and alternative show flyers from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s with the visual sensibilities of the International Typographic Style pioneered in the 50s and 60s by such Swiss design luminaries as Armin Hofmann and Josef Müller-Brockman. “To see these posters all together,” writes Steven Heller in the foreword, “en masse in this book, in one pleasing eyeful, is to be totally fooled.”

It’s interesting to see posters for punk bands like Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys – and more, many of which I’d never heard of – typeset in lowercase Akzidenz-Grotesk medium. (Helvetica was developed in the late 50s to compete with Akzidenz-Grotesk, which was released in 1898.) “[I]t’s also interesting,” writes Joyce, “to consider the common threads between the two art forms. The Swiss modernists purged on extraneous decoration to create crystal-clear communications, while punk rock took on bloated self-indulgent rock and roll and stripped it to its core. Both created something new, powerful, timeless.”

Visit Mike Joyce’s website to see how he incorporates his minimalist style into all of his work.

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