Wednesday, 18 September 2019
Future Sound of London - "Central Industrial"
The spoken line "Welcome to Central Industrial. We are the future" has been sampled by Future Sound of London in their song "Central Industrial" on their Accelerator album also sampled by Woob in their song "Void, Part One" on the album em:t 0094, and by Jam and Spoon in their remix of Moby's "Go". Sonic Subjunkies samples various parts of the film in their songs "Central Industrial" and "Central Industrial II: The Lockdown".
Sunday, 15 September 2019
Daniel Mason - "The Winter Soldier"
Breathtaking book of a doctor in the first world war. As always, Masons' style is sublime. The landscape, the people.
The doctor ends up in working in a remote village, slowly learning and discovering the devout nurse's background. More than a bland love story, it's a fascinating view, no matter how fictitious.
'Mother isn't anything if not blunt.'
'My interest is yours,' she said, now utterly still. 'You are how old?'
'Please, Mother. You don't need me to say it. I believe you were present at my birth.'
It occured to him that he had never seen a woman completely naked who wasn't on an autopsy slab, but decided this unsaid thought was best kept to himself.
Moreover, said Zimmer, to Anna's credit, she even volunteered. Of course, mostly she read war poetry, and when she tended to teh men, it was above the waist only and not on the face, and she didn't like any wound with blood or pus.
"What kind of wound is that?" asked Lucius.
"So Mostly she reads war poetry," said Zimmer. But still she volunteered.
Again he looked at the girl, and as a man of science, he understood how it has happened - the rain, the ghost, the chemistries of memory, the magic way that crystals appeared out of solution, before dissolving once more into its haze.
He began to walk faster, skipped, and broke into a run, colliding into a young couple scurrying off beneath a newspaper glistening with rain. Another collision, this time with a man carrying his dog. The crowd seemed to converg: a policeman in black oicloth, a trio of young men in bowlers, a woman heaving a kicking child. He pushed through them, now not bothering to apologize, as little eddies of outrage exploded in his wake.
The doctor ends up in working in a remote village, slowly learning and discovering the devout nurse's background. More than a bland love story, it's a fascinating view, no matter how fictitious.
'Mother isn't anything if not blunt.'
'My interest is yours,' she said, now utterly still. 'You are how old?'
'Please, Mother. You don't need me to say it. I believe you were present at my birth.'
It occured to him that he had never seen a woman completely naked who wasn't on an autopsy slab, but decided this unsaid thought was best kept to himself.
Moreover, said Zimmer, to Anna's credit, she even volunteered. Of course, mostly she read war poetry, and when she tended to teh men, it was above the waist only and not on the face, and she didn't like any wound with blood or pus.
"What kind of wound is that?" asked Lucius.
"So Mostly she reads war poetry," said Zimmer. But still she volunteered.
Again he looked at the girl, and as a man of science, he understood how it has happened - the rain, the ghost, the chemistries of memory, the magic way that crystals appeared out of solution, before dissolving once more into its haze.
He began to walk faster, skipped, and broke into a run, colliding into a young couple scurrying off beneath a newspaper glistening with rain. Another collision, this time with a man carrying his dog. The crowd seemed to converg: a policeman in black oicloth, a trio of young men in bowlers, a woman heaving a kicking child. He pushed through them, now not bothering to apologize, as little eddies of outrage exploded in his wake.
Olivia Laing - "Crudo"
Wanted to love it but didn't really care. Based partially on a real person / real events, but told with fiction.. actually I don't even remember much about it. I did not enjoy the style nor the narrative.
Jy Yang - "The Black Tides of Heaven"
Enjoyable but bland fantasy novel set in a steampunk China where some people (Tensors) can manipulate the "slack", basic components (water, fire, ...) Set against the renegade twin son of the Protectorate, some supposdely ruthless ruler, some form of resistance starts to play out.
I could not care fore the characters. The story was okay, but it lacked depth somehow.
I could not care fore the characters. The story was okay, but it lacked depth somehow.
Charles Duhigg - "The Power of Habit"
When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks. So unless you deliberately fight a habit - unless you find new routines - the pattern will unfold automatically.
Habits never really disappear. They're encoded into the structures of our brain, and that's a huge advantage for us, because it would be awful if we had to relearn how to drive after every vacation. The problem is that your brain can't tell the difference between bad and good habits, and so if you have a bad one, it's always lurking there, waiting for the right cues and rewards.
Tuesday, 3 September 2019
Colson Whitehead - "The Nickel Boys"
Amazing book about a fictional "reform school" for boys, told by a black "student", or rather inmate, Elwood Curtis. And his friend, Jack Turner. Writing that gets you from the get-go. Somehow near the end I got a strong Michael Ondaatje feeling; perhaps because this is based on a real story, a real terrible place in Florida where boys were whipped and abused and killed.
She was rarely sick, and when she was, she refused to stay off her feet. She was a survivor but the world took her in bites. Her husband had died young, her daughter had vanished out West, and now her only grandson had been sentenced to this place. She had swallowed the portion of misery the world had given to her, and now there she was, alone on Brevard Street, her family tugged away one by one. She might not be there.
No, he liked the punch-drunk ones, half walking at mile twenty-three, tongues flapping like Labradors. Tumbling across the finish line by hook or by crook, feet pounded to bloody meat in their Nikes. The laggards and limpers who weren't running the course but running deep into their character - down into the cave to return to the light with what they found.
She was rarely sick, and when she was, she refused to stay off her feet. She was a survivor but the world took her in bites. Her husband had died young, her daughter had vanished out West, and now her only grandson had been sentenced to this place. She had swallowed the portion of misery the world had given to her, and now there she was, alone on Brevard Street, her family tugged away one by one. She might not be there.
No, he liked the punch-drunk ones, half walking at mile twenty-three, tongues flapping like Labradors. Tumbling across the finish line by hook or by crook, feet pounded to bloody meat in their Nikes. The laggards and limpers who weren't running the course but running deep into their character - down into the cave to return to the light with what they found.
Thursday, 22 August 2019
Tuesday, 20 August 2019
Saturday, 10 August 2019
Thursday, 8 August 2019
Friday, 2 August 2019
Thursday, 1 August 2019
Tim Kadlec - "The Ethics of Web Performance"
Interesting article describing how performance of websites, impacting users (low end devices unable to render, low bandwidth, wear and tear of battery life) is actually an ethical concern.
https://timkadlec.com/remembers/2019-01-09-the-ethics-of-performance/
https://timkadlec.com/remembers/2019-01-09-the-ethics-of-performance/
Spor ft Tasha Baxter - "As I Need You"
drum'n'bass-y track, quite nice. Evocative vocals by Tasha Baxter.
Monday, 29 July 2019
Kurt Vonnegut - "Cat's Cradle"
Fun, though not over the top. Great writing, though his style becomes very familiar.
[preface, quoting Fedric Jameson in his elegy for Philip K. Dick]
"It may be the very conventionality, the inauthenticity, the formal stereotyping of Science Fiction that gives it one signal advantage over modernist high literature. The latter can show us everything about the individual psyche and its subjective experience and alienation, save the essential - the logic of stereotyes, reproductions and depersonalization in which the individual is held in our own time."
They were lovebirds. They entertained each other endlessly with little gifts; sights worth seeing out the plane window, amusing or instructive bits from things they read, random recollections of times gone by.
The people down there are poor enough and scared enough and ignorant enough to have some common sense!
'The bubonic plague. The bulldozer was stalled by corpses.'
'Oh yes. Anyway, one sleepless night I stayed up with Father while he worked. It was all we could do to find a live patient to treat. In bed after bed we found dead people.
'And Father started giggling,' Castle continued.
'He couldn't stop. He walked out into the night with his flashlight. He was still giggling. He was making the flashlight beam dance over all the dead people stacked outside. He put his hand on my head, and do you know what that marvellous man said to me?' asked Castle.
'Nope.'
' "Son," my father said to me, "someday this will all be yours." '
'He was in the S.S. for fourteen years. He was a camp physician at Auschwitz for six of those years.'
'Doing penance at the House of Hope and Mercy, is he?'
'Yes,' said Castle, 'and making great strides, too, saving lives right and left.'
'Good for him.'
'Yes. If he keeps going at his present rate, working night and day, the number of people he's saved will equal the number of people he let die - in the year 3010.'
[preface, quoting Fedric Jameson in his elegy for Philip K. Dick]
"It may be the very conventionality, the inauthenticity, the formal stereotyping of Science Fiction that gives it one signal advantage over modernist high literature. The latter can show us everything about the individual psyche and its subjective experience and alienation, save the essential - the logic of stereotyes, reproductions and depersonalization in which the individual is held in our own time."
They were lovebirds. They entertained each other endlessly with little gifts; sights worth seeing out the plane window, amusing or instructive bits from things they read, random recollections of times gone by.
The people down there are poor enough and scared enough and ignorant enough to have some common sense!
'The bubonic plague. The bulldozer was stalled by corpses.'
'Oh yes. Anyway, one sleepless night I stayed up with Father while he worked. It was all we could do to find a live patient to treat. In bed after bed we found dead people.
'And Father started giggling,' Castle continued.
'He couldn't stop. He walked out into the night with his flashlight. He was still giggling. He was making the flashlight beam dance over all the dead people stacked outside. He put his hand on my head, and do you know what that marvellous man said to me?' asked Castle.
'Nope.'
' "Son," my father said to me, "someday this will all be yours." '
'He was in the S.S. for fourteen years. He was a camp physician at Auschwitz for six of those years.'
'Doing penance at the House of Hope and Mercy, is he?'
'Yes,' said Castle, 'and making great strides, too, saving lives right and left.'
'Good for him.'
'Yes. If he keeps going at his present rate, working night and day, the number of people he's saved will equal the number of people he let die - in the year 3010.'
Jenni Fagan - "The Sunlight Pilgrims"
Nicely written dystopia about an ice age occuring in 2020 where Dylan, formerly working in his own "Babylon" cinema, retreats to a caravan that his deceased mother had bought. Some emotional development, particularly regarding Dylan and Constantine's love, felt a bit stretched, but it was a good read.
Stella imageins the brightest sun is for her, the second is for her mother and the last is for clarity, most recently lost. Her mother wants this back in their lives, but the child does not know why she should want it so much when clarity is no ally. It isn't any kind of a companion at all.
We all share twenty-two identical chomosomes; the twenty-third is the sex chromosome and they don't kick in for at least ten weeks. Everyoe starts out female and they stay like that for months.
- What, even Dad?
- Even Jesus. Go tell that to the nuns. For some embryos the Y-chromosome creates testosterone and female organs change into male ones; about three months in, what starts out as a clitoris, in the XY gene, gets bigger until it becomes, you know, a dick.
- Mum! Can't you say penis?
- It sounds so sterile.
- Why don't they teach all of this stuff in Sex Ed?
- Gender indoctrination. It's state-imposed. The male body still holds the memory of it - the line below a scrotum is called a raphe line, and without it you'd have a vagina; every embryo has an opening at the genitals and it becomes labia and vagina or, when male hormones kick in, the tissue fuses together and it leaves a scar, which is the raphe line.
Stella imageins the brightest sun is for her, the second is for her mother and the last is for clarity, most recently lost. Her mother wants this back in their lives, but the child does not know why she should want it so much when clarity is no ally. It isn't any kind of a companion at all.
We all share twenty-two identical chomosomes; the twenty-third is the sex chromosome and they don't kick in for at least ten weeks. Everyoe starts out female and they stay like that for months.
- What, even Dad?
- Even Jesus. Go tell that to the nuns. For some embryos the Y-chromosome creates testosterone and female organs change into male ones; about three months in, what starts out as a clitoris, in the XY gene, gets bigger until it becomes, you know, a dick.
- Mum! Can't you say penis?
- It sounds so sterile.
- Why don't they teach all of this stuff in Sex Ed?
- Gender indoctrination. It's state-imposed. The male body still holds the memory of it - the line below a scrotum is called a raphe line, and without it you'd have a vagina; every embryo has an opening at the genitals and it becomes labia and vagina or, when male hormones kick in, the tissue fuses together and it leaves a scar, which is the raphe line.
Saturday, 27 July 2019
Carpenter Brut - "Escape from Midwich Valley"
interesting. will I like this when sober? too Castlevania-ish?
Friday, 26 July 2019
Noir Désir - "Le vent nous portera"
On spotify's "Archive" (them of "Bullet") radio station. nice song.
Atomic Blonde (2017)
Thirteen a dozen but enjoyable end of cold war era Berlin spy noir flic. Yep, that's all. Charlize Theron is good. Nice soundtrack. Nothing spectacular.
Us (2019)
From the same director and writer as "Get Out", a family gets haunted by their döppelgängers. Amazing stuff. Highly entertaining. He uses a lot of the horror and thriller tropes, with perfect control over both how they work and how to leverage them so as not to blandly imitate. Amazing film.
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