Michelle Buteau - stand up comedy show

 On netflix. About her Dutch husband. Enjoyable enough.

Erin Morgenstern - "The Starless Sea"

 In style, both story and writing, quite akin to The Night Circus, but not in a bad way. Quite enjoying it.

Let's Eat Grandma - "Rapunzel"

 found in the Iggy Pop BBC 6 playlist on spotify

Brave New World

Elke Wiss - "Socrates op sneakers"

R. F. Kuang - The Poppy War trilogy

 Chinese history in myth form, with Rin as a Speerie able to summon The Phoenix.

Enjoyable although not written amazingly well - sometimes it feels rushed - and Rin's attitude is bothering me. Waiting for the final book.

The Boys

 Had forgotten about this series. Waiting until all have come out for season two.

China Miéville - "The City and the City"

 Enjoyable so far. Maybe this will cure my anti-C.M. (since "Un-lun-dun") antipathy.

Professor Elemental - "Fighting Trousers" (and other songs)

 weird stuff. Funny. Crazy quick lyrics.

also: "Weird Weird West"

and: "I'm British"

random links from lobste.rs

•  the difference between 14nm and 7nm
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kQUXpZpLXI
• hacking Tony Abbott's passport from an instagram photo
  https://mango.pdf.zone/finding-former-australian-prime-minister-tony-abbotts-passport-number-on-instagram
• Matt Blaze and the nein nines mystery of Russian spies being caught
  https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/neinnines/
• Super Mario Bros 3. in 3 minutes - insane reverse engineering
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWbZFj-cLvk

A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood

 Great film.  Amazing acting from Tom Hanks.

Eva Griffin - "Soko sucking on Kristen's fingers, 2016"

 

Soko sucking on Kristen’s fingers, 2016

Eva Griffin

Hands on the window she
wears the red like a challenge
all dotted up in the parking lot.
I hadn’t washed my hair that morning just
tussled it on my way out to meet her
curls wet, tucked neat
into a baseball cap.
I can’t even see her eyes,
my own face in the frames
suspended there between
smoke breaks and grease.
When she takes my finger in her
mouth it feels like I’m being fed,
I hold her tight by the nail
of my thumb and let her wash
over me pink. Cheeks fill fast
counting the white polka dots
on her blouse until it all blurs or
turns into my open mouth or
the sun disc of my reflection or
all the buttons I’ve ever undone or
her becoming the endless pattern or
her in the doorway of our bedroom or
thick cream left in the fridge to spoil or
skin left wrinkling in the bath or
the towel peeled open, discarded or
fresh sheets screaming on the floor or
her small breasts hanging over me or
a second of breath before laughter or
sitting on the edge of the mattress afterwards
bridle roses unfurling from my chest
the vines whispering hello I love
you is it enough to make time slow
down until we are just this:
committed onto canvas
messy, half-asleep, sitting in my car and
reaching.

Tunnel 29

 10 episode series about "Tunnel 29," a tunnel dug under the Berlin Wall, rescueing 29 people.

Interesting enough, but I've been spoiled by "Shit town" and the such. Not as intense, somehow. 

random songs from Iggy

 2020-09-04

• Jo Harrop & Jamie McCredie - "Guilty"
  very country-singer-songer-like
• Angel Bat Dawid - "Transition East"
  Forlorn saxophone, bit like Etienne Jaumet?

Appearances vs Experiences: What Really Makes Us Happy

 https://fs.blog/2020/07/appearances-vs-experiences/

When we think that the way a building looks will dictate our experience living in it, we are mistaking the map for the territory. Architectural flourishes soon fade into the background. What matters is the day -to-day experience of living there, when relationsihps matter much more than how things look. Proximity to friends is a higher predictor of happiness than charming old brick.

[Charles Montgomery] A person with a one-hour commute has to earn 40 percent more money to be as satisfied with life as someone who walks to the office. On the other hand, for a single person, exchanging a long commute for a short walk to work has the same effect on happiness as finding a new love.

So why do we make this mistake? Drawing on the work on psychologist Daniel Gilbert, Montgomery explains that it's a matter of us thinking we'll get used to cmmuting (an experience) and won't get used to the nicer living environment (a thing).

The opposite is true. While a bigger garden and spare bedroom soon cease to be novel, every day's commute is a little bit different, meaning we can never get quite used to it. There is a direct linear downwards relationship between commute time and life satisfaction, but there's no linear upwards correlation between house size and life satisfaction. As Montgomery says, "The problem is, we consistently make decision that suggest we are not so good as distinguishing between ephemeral and lasting pleasures.

[...] We maximize our chances at happiness when we prioritise our experience of life instead of acquiring things to fill it with.

The Membranes - "Breathe In, Breathe Out"

 fun song. but also, their other stuff is not bad. bit post rock?

Beth Singler - "Why is the language of transhumanists and religion so similar?" (Aeon magazine)

https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-the-language-of-transhumanists-and-religion-so-similar

 'Orthogenesis assumes that variation is not random but is directed towards fixed goals.' [Peter Bowles, Evolution: the history of an Idea, 1983] So evolution isn't something that happens to us; rather it is what we make of it, and how we make our selves. Taken a step further, orthogenesis can be read to imply that intention is what brings about change.

This view of human history has a distinctively modern flavour. It stands in contrast to an older, more cyclical model of time, in which 'history waxes and wanes like the moon', as the historian Keith Thoams puts it in Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971). Because everything moves in cycles, Thomas argues, 'the highest aesthetic and ethical virtue lay in imitation, or rather emulation'. Here an inventor becomes someone who finds what has been lost, not omeone who comes up with something new. But there was a growing grasp of change in Europe from the 16th century onwards, Thomas argues; people developed a fresh awareness of the differences between their world and that of their ancestors, based on data-points as simple as the dates of publication in books, fresh off brand-new printing presses. Such shifts led to the belief that knowledge was cumulative, not cyclical - which is the mindset of the scientist and of the ultra-rationalist. If time marchs on, then of course religion becomes old, vestigial, to be replaced.

Religious worldviews often retain something of the cyclical view of history, where old books are not relics but the foundation stones of knowledge.

A god-like being of infinite knowing (the singularity); an escape of the flesh and this limited world (uploading our minds); a moment of transfiguration or 'end of days' (the singularity as a moment of rapture); prophets (even if they work for Google); demons and hell (even if it's an eternal computer simulation of suffering), and evangelists who wear smart suits (just like the religious ones do). Consciously and unconsciously, religious ideas are at work in the narratives of those discussing, planning, and hoping for a future shaped by AI. 

Occupation

 Scifi about aliens invading a small Australian village. Strange jumping story, not a real plot line, over the top slowmotion.

M. John Harrison - "You Should Come With Me Now"

Some interesting and really strange stories (about the man trying to escape from a prison), some of them less interesting. 

Train From Busan

 amazing zombie film. Gets everything right; the action, the logic, the pathos.