Links / Youtube
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The strangest thing happened in my brain today, where SpaceX’s IPO reminded me of this guitar teacher, who hears Radiohead’s Weird Fishes/Arpeggi for the first time, tries to deconstruct it on the fly, falls for it, and is especially taken by Phil Selway’s drumming like a metronome.
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Over the past few years I’ve grown to appreciate Jeff Parker (virtuoso guitarist from Chicago) very much. The jazzy, improvised nature of his work—best exemplified on a few of his recent albums, like The Way Out of Easy and Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy—is just phenomenal.
The latest album he’s released with his quartet, Happy Today, might be my favourite so far. International Anthem and Nonesuch Records recently uploaded the video of its recording to YouTube, and it is a trip.
Jay Bellerose on drums and percussion, Anna Butterss on acoustic bass, Josh Johnson on alto saxophone—I hope to catch them live all together one day. I can’t believe this has accrued just 14K views so far!
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A kid introduces his professor, a poet, to Kendrick Lamar. The professor, expertly spinning his pencil, impressively sinks his teeth into Kendrick’s lyric, from across a few albums, and—admiringly—lays out the poetic nature of his work.
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iPad Air with M4
№ 127Apple released a few ads this week and, while I haven’t paid very close attention to their advertising output recently, they are... quite great. I liked the one for the Neo, and the ad for the new iPad Air is particularly well executed. It has a lovely light touch, and is somewhat disorienting amd irksome, but in a good way. The horrendous macOS regression aside, it seems they’ve found their mojo on this front.
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The Winterkeeper
№ 124A lifetime spent protecting Yellowstone National Park. Steven Fuller is a winter caretaker of the park, and has lived there for the past fifty years, hunkering down in a remote mountain cabin, and raising his children there, too—a most idyllic upbringing.
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Produced by a clothing brand (apologies), this video follows Matt Somerville, a bee conservationist. For the last fourteen years, Matt has created log hives in winter, placing them throughout the landscape in summer to provide shelter for wild honey bees. They’re beautiful structures—sculptures of sorts—and I very much appreciate the work. Judging by this short documentary, creating just a single log hive is no easy feat, and the man has created thousands.
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Mr. Scorsese
№ 118I’ve been rewatching Scorsese films these past two weeks (Killers of the Flower Moon, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Departed, Casino), so I was excited to learn about the new limited documentary series Rebecca Miller made on the director, called Mr. Scorsese.
I appreciated the documentary, learning more about Scorsese’s older, brilliant work, and getting an inside look at films like Goodfellas, Taxi Driver and Gangs of New York. The man’s a great storyteller, and at five episodes, I think it could’ve been a little longer still!
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Your mind wants to move, and the best thing a work of art can do is take your mind with it, moving somewhere you never expected to move.
Anne Carson, interviewed at the Louisiana Literature festival in 2024. I watched it last year, and the conversation keeps resurfacing in my brain. An enigma.
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Retirement Plan
№ 115A beautiful animated short film by John Kelly. I watched it earlier this week (thank you Simon!), and it just popped up in my head again, as I tried to read a few articles in an attempt to close a few tabs.
“When I retire, I’ll read the 35 years of saved articles on my reading list.”
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I don’t know why this happened at the office of The New York Times, but here we are. Erykah Badu hasn’t released an album in forever, and it doesn’t matter. Look at her aura as she floats into the room; you wouldn’t dare ask her why. The performance is just about flawless.
Currently, she’s celebrating the 25th anniversary of her landmark album Mama’s Gun. Perhaps someday soon, that album she made with The Alchemist will see the light of day.