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RIGHT NOW? Take a really deep breath.

Then exhale.

 

Not for no reason, definitely not to prepare you for anything amazing or awful. Just a moment of mindfulness for your brain. Doesn’t that feel better? We should do it more often.  The future is admitting wellness is everything. Also, I breathed so long I passed out from euphoria.

This (below linked) magazine is *astonishingly* good. I think it’s quarterly, and it’s a fusion of mental health, philosophy, wellness, and taking time for *you*. It’s like a “slow magazine” trend. Really impressed. And it makes sense they’re not on Twitter if they’re about wellness. Also, guys… if you’re all good and macho, send this link to your wives. They will love it like I do. lol https://www.breathemagazine.com/

 

Down the rabbit hole!

Monty Python reminds us all this Easter to 'Fear the Bunny'! | Tellyspotting

 

 

This week’s newsletter title is a misattributed quote from Lewis Carroll, but a popular one, nonetheless. It’s interesting how people interpret it.  It’s either a reason to have clear goals so you take the right road… or is it about letting life take you where it leads you with an open mind and heart? I prefer the latter.

 

OH ALSO TRUE STORY:

 

 

Philosophy & Poetry

 

  • I was thinking. Yay! In my own words:

I truly feel like life is now the hollow drifting of weakening eyes between various incandescing geometric shapes, the screens looking at us as mere passengers yoked to our ambulatory meat vessels for dissemination of their products at the cost of our humanity.

THAT, by the way, is a weird pseudo-poetic call back riff mashup of Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County “TV Brainmushed Ambulatory Vacuum Tubes” vs this 2009 Onion article: Report: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles https://www.theonion.com/report-90-of-waking-hours-spent-staring-at-glowing-re-1819570829

I could have let it stand, but some movie taught me to always cite your sources.

 

 

  • I just stumbled onto a quote I’ve looked for for decades, and I thought it was attributed to JP Sartre.
“There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you will still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to everything.” – Tsunetomo Yamamoto, The Hagakure: A code to the way of samurai

The original version I saw was presented as from the 1900s.  It suggested that running away from the inevitability of rain drenching you simply makes you look like a wet fool, instead of just wet. This, far more nuanced and original take, is Tsunetomo Yamamoto from his circa 1717 book “The Hagakure”. I’ve been reading a lot of samurai philosophy, and I wonder if it leaked into French philosophy in the middle of the 20th century. France and Japan have been related since the 1600s. Wild.

The history of relations between France and Japan goes back to the early 17th century, when a Japanese samurai and ambassador on his way to Rome landed for a few days in Saint-Tropez and created a sensation. France and Japan have enjoyed a very robust and progressive relationship spanning centuries through various contacts in each other’s countries by senior representatives, strategic efforts, and cultural exchanges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France–Japan_relations

 

“This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.”

I was speaking to a friend about Eliot’s Hollow Men, and how Eliot wasn’t sure of the poem after the H-Bomb was invented, but also noted that he was not sure if the world would end, either.  The “whimper” part was that he spoke with people who had their homes bombed in World War 2, and that “they heard nothing” before the explosion.

But his assessment aside, I can’t stop thinking of the last lines… because we’ve all been trained for the apocalyptic cataclysm by disaster movies… alien invasion, asteroid, massive global events. But that’s not happening. It’s a slow moving trainwreck of a population thinning pandemic, supply chain splitting at the seams, the business model of the economy is broken, climate refugees clamor for help from functionless and criminal governments.

It will come for the poor first, and work it’s way up in a silent breaking of reality, moving like molasses until there are but a very few people looking out at a planet that is barely breathing. Maybe it’s not a whimper, but a slow wheeze.

It will be wild when nothing works and the billionaires don’t know how to make the lights work or cook dinner. Is that cynical and unfair? Take it with a grain of grumpy salt.

 

 

  • Tonight, in Oakland BY DANEZ SMITH (whole poem in link)

“I did not come here to sing a blues. Lately, I open my mouth & out comes marigolds, yellow plums. I came to make the sky a garden”. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58027/tonight-in-oakland

 

 

  • I’ve been reading a lot of Japanese Samurai philosophy. This is the *same guy as above*. Doesn’t this sound like Trump?

“Even if it seems certain that you will lose, retaliate. Neither wisdom nor technique has a place in this. A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death. By doing this, you will awaken from your dreams.”
? Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

 

SPACE

 

  • Changing the pejorative nature of talking about “little green men” from the perspective of Astrobiology that very well might discover some form of existing life out in space. When that happens, they need a rational, non-pop-culture framework to explore it in. This essay is fascinating!

Call for a framework for reporting evidence for life beyond Earth https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03804-9.epdf

 

 

  • This is fantastic, but anyone that wants to go to mars is dumb and has a deathwish, but still:

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Remember The Cure’s “Jupiter Crash” song from the 90s? It was from when we recorded a major impact for the first time in a meaningfully observable way? It happened again, and was recorded. The white light that starts at the 10 second mark (vid auto queued) and lasts for a bit is a large (150mi??) object hitting the *surface* of Jupiter. Caught by a few people, it’s a big moment!

 

 

 

  • Pretty unreal look at massive solar flares from this week:

 

 

 

 

  • This is from a bit ago, but the surface of Comet 67P from the Rosetta Lander. This sequence was taken 500,000 km or 310,685.596 miles from earth.

 

 

“Think of the rippled surface of a swimming pool on a sunny day, showing patterns of bright light on the bottom of the pool,” Richard Griffiths, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii in Hilo, said in a statement.

“These bright patterns on the bottom are caused by a similar kind of effect as gravitational lensing,” added Griffiths, lead author of a recent study announcing the results. “The ripples on the surface act as partial lenses and focus sunlight into bright squiggly patterns on the bottom.”

 

 

  • The sounds of Mars:

 

 

Illustration showing a glowing, fiery planet impacting a larger gray planet

 

 

SCIENCE, NATURE, AND TECHNOLOGY

 

 

 

 

  • Yes, he is drawing that.
@gil.assayasDrawing a Synthesizer in MIDI – Live! ???? #synth #synthesizer #livemidiart #piano #keyboard? original sound – GLASYS

 

 

Direct link to podcast (but episode isn’t out yet): https://weinterruptthisbroadcast.org/

 

  • This is the most exciting science nerd 40 minutes of recent memory, w/ two 20 minute videos.  Can you go faster than wind speed, in a straight line, using wind power? If you don’t know this YT channel… mash the subscribe button, but holy cow this is the coolest thing ever. He won $10,000 proving a physicist wrong that this doesn’t work. Because it’s not logical.

The man’s description of two sailboats rotating in a cylindrical universe is probably one of the most profound genius “a-ha” moments I’ve ever had in my life. He’s the genius, not me.

An article on the below vids: A YouTuber bet a physicist $10,000 that a wind-powered vehicle could travel twice as fast as the wind itself — and won https://www.businessinsider.com/youtuber-won-10000-bet-with-physicist-over-wind-powered-vehicle-2021-7

 

REBUTTAL VIDEO OMG SO FUN:

 

  • I was worried about water, but the below isn’t for about a billion years, so there’s that.

Enjoy It While You Can: Dropping Oxygen Will Eventually Suffocate Most Life on Earth https://www.sciencealert.com/enjoy-it-while-you-can-dropping-oxygen-will-eventually-suffocate-most-life-on-earth

 

 

Infographics help:

 

 

  • TURN IT ALL OVER TO THE AI. IT WILL ALL BE FINE. This is a hilariously and relatively harmless tech vs privacy error:

 

  • But this is truly horrifying, as they attempt to box out anyone else in AR/VR:

Facebook is researching AI systems that see, hear, and remember everything you do 19 AI tools that could one day appear in Facebook’s AR glasses https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/14/22725894/facebook-augmented-reality-ar-glasses-ai-systems-ego4d-research

 

  • But, technology can also, uhhh…. enhance. I was this many years old when I found out today there is something called teledildonics. It’s the best word. Remote stimulation of a partner has been around for decades. But I gotta tell ya, this article is interesting, and that pic is not Batman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledildonics

 

Umm….errrr uhhh ok. moving on.

 

MOVIES AND TV

 

  • If you’ve not seen “Jodorowsky’s Dune”, a documentary about the director’s failed project… it’s a keystone to the past of film and art and the present day. For example… Salvador Dali introduced H.R. Giger to Alejandro Jodorowsky, who then introduced Giger to Dan O’Bannon who realized he’d be perfect on his Ridley Scott project, “Alien”. And they talk about the most famous mural ever, depicting a fart. But it’s unreal:

 

I think the Doors were the first punk band. But this isn’t about that. It’s about January Jansen, my friend and Jim Morrison’s best friend. We stop by and say hello to Jonas Cash and Iggy Pop as well.

 

 

  • In the Culture and People section, an article about loneliness leads to an article about Lighthouses. So down below there’s a trailer for the film “The Lighthouse”.

 

 

  • Thanks Kerry for this John Candy clip with Billy Crystal. He nails Orson Welles, it took me a moment. “Move the camera” is gold.

 

 

  • This subreddit shows mundane, prosaic, everyday items that become movie props. It’s an AMAZING subreddit. I sorted by best of all time, and a lot is fantasy, like Star Wars, and sci-fi, like real sci-fi. https://www.reddit.com/r/Thatsabooklight/top/?t=all

 

 

  • The “Impossible Crane Shot” from 1964’s “Soy Cuba” is a bit of a misnomer… they had some technical aspects to this, using cranes and guided on wires, but the launch upward was camera operators carefully handing off the camera to another person, like passing a basketball. In fact, the opening sequence of this film does the same thing, but from a roof deck of a luxury hotel to inside a pool stories below. This is before steadicams or light equipment… the fact this was even attempted, vs accomplished. Who said agitprop is bad!?

 

 

  • Speaking of impossible… I remember being in the audience of watching my HERO’s book spring to life. Carl Sagan’s Contact is just brilliant in so many ways… but my jaw dropped, and I almost jumped out of my chair, with the medicine cabinet long shot, which takes place in an impossible mirror world. I almost demanded they run it back, and it took the internet decades to catch up with it and explain it. It’s nothing impossible, and nothing tricky… just innovative, ahead of its time, composting.

 

 

 

  • A brilliant pre-cursor to the “artificially intelligent computer goes insane” trope of 2011 with Hal, Skynet and Cyberdyne in Terminator, Robocop’s ED-209, Wargames, Big Brother, etc… there was the 1970 “Colossus: The Forbin Project” with all the retro-futuristic style you could muster. I delight in this film, and not just because the robot knows a good martini is dry…

 

Tucked away in a secret location in the Rockies, Dr. Charles Forbin (Eric Braeden) has developed a massive computer system, dubbed “Colossus,” that is supposed to ensure the nation’s safety against nuclear attack. But when Colossus connects to a similar Russian computer, “Guardian,” the intelligent machines begin conducting a private dialog. Nervous as to what they might be plotting, Forbin severs the connection, only to have Colossus threaten a nuclear attack if the link isn’t restored.

Here’s the whole film! Go figure! —->

Colossus – The Forbin Project (1970) from Doug Clapp on Vimeo.

 

 

 

 

MUSIC

 

  • An old post got resurrected when January Jansen’s wife was sent *my blog post* from some random person in *her* life, meaning my blog is actually leaking into the real world. But… Also some Roy Orbison, Jonas Cash, Pink Floyd, The Residents, Link Wray, and a Michelin Starred Chef married to the creator of iconic scenes from Pan’s Labyrinth and Interstellar. Also, some wildly outdated and inappropriate mayhem.

 

I think the Doors were the first punk band. But this isn’t about that. It’s about January Jansen, my friend and Jim Morrison’s best friend. We stop by and say hello to Jonas Cash and Iggy Pop as well.

 

 

  • Have you ever wondered what a masterpiece looks like?

 

 

  • 924 Gilman represent, but honestly the below KQED article is about even earlier, about the early to mid 80s. For a WONDERFUL documentary, check out “Turn it Around: the Story of East Bay Punk”. narrated by Iggy Pop, produced by Green Day, some of the stories are just fantastic. Includes interviews from members of Rancid, Jawbreaker, Dead Kennedys, Metallica, AFI, Fugazi/Minor Thread, Guns n Roses, Bikini Kill, Offspring, NoFX, Primus, Spearhead, Bad Religion, The Tubes, Subhumans, Angry Samoans, 7 Seconds, and more.  https://eastbaypunk.com/

A Portal to San Francisco’s Punk Rock Past https://www.kqed.org/arts/13902953/alternative-voices-1980s-san-francisco-punk-jeanne-hansen-photography-jonah-raskin

 

 

COMEDY

  • Bill. He’s the best, but during the pandemic, I think he levelled up into mellow Burr. The secret? It’s hallucinogenic mushrooms that settle your mind into understanding your role and connection with the universe, the moment in time, everyone, and everything. It settles the nerves a bit. NO REALLY HE SAYS THAT. He’s not angry anymore! Hey, whatever works good sir. He’s still one of the funniest guys. WAIT… you’ve never heard him literally set Philadelphia on fire for 10 minutes straight? Well… you’re in luck. At the bottom.

 

 

 

This is blue as hell, but I have to say there’s not been a better takedown of an entire stadium of people and whole city. It’s the best. He said that although he was unprofessional, the only regret was not trashing the 76ers as well.

 

 

PEOPLE, CULTURE, SOCIETY, ART

 

  • Solo Air Freestyle is a sport. It’s hard to comprehend the future in the present. No, it’s not some movie thing.

 

 

 

 

 

Egon Schiele self-portrait in gallery

 

 

  • Until about a century ago, an extremely small amount of people knew what it was like to be alone, nor lonely. Basically, Lighthouse keepers. And it tied into the myth of rugged individualism in America.

One is the loneliest number: the history of a Western problem – https://aeon.co/ideas/one-is-the-loneliest-number-the-history-of-a-western-problem via @aeonmag

 

 

 

 

Definitely watch A24 released Eggers film “The Lighthouse”, a follow up to The VVitch, starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Defoe. It nails the above sentiment with a Lovecraftian chaos. And yes, the Lighthouse is a penis. MOVIE TRAILERS IN THE SOCIETY AND PEOPLE SECTION THE HORROR.

 

 

 

 

  • Douglas Adams died at the age of 49. Tragic. I was looking up, and Bill Paxton and Norm Macdonald were both 61. These losses are just so sad. Game Over, indeed.

It’s been 42 years since ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide’ answered the ultimate question https://www.npr.org/2021/10/17/1046593657/its-been-42-years-since-the-hitchhikers-guide-answered-the-ultimate-question

 

 

  • Astonishingly eerily cool:

 

 

  • HNNNNNNNGGGGHHHH

THIS RETRO-FUTURIST FURNITURE LINE WAS DREAMED UP BY DAFT PUNK’S CREATIVE DIRECTOR Get Lucky with cool custom furniture crafted by Daft Punk Creative Director Cédric Hervet and his cousin Nicolas. https://www.maxim.com/style/this-retro-futurist-furniture-line-was-dreamed-up-by-daft-punks-creative-director/

THIS HIFI MY GOODNESS

 

 

VEHICLES

 

If I am buying an $11 Million dollar apartment on a boat to live with other millionaires, I want to make sure this guy isn’t captain:

 

 

@candaalex93#yacht #??????? suono originale – AlexCânda93

 

 

By Uncle FishbitsCategories: Newsletter