Just a tiny little reminder, should you need one, that Prince Rogers Nelson was a One of One. “You know I wrote this while I was lookin’ in the mirror, right?”
PGMOL: “The goal by Luiz Diaz was disallowed for offside by the on-field team of match officials. This was a clear and obvious factual error and should have resulted in the goal being awarded through VAR intervention, however, the VAR failed to intervene.” Once more: VAR is evil and must be destroyed. Week after week, an unmitigated disaster. ⚽️
I wrote about an extremely poor NYT piece on the Data Colada / Francesca Gino kerfuffle.
W. H. Auden died fifty years ago today, and I’ve written a brief reflection, with many links.
It took me a long time to find a WordPress theme that (with a few minor tweaks) made my big blog look the way I want it to look, but I finally did.
Had I known about this passage from Dorothy Day’s diary, it would have been really useful to me for The Year of Our Lord 1943 and Breaking Bread With the Dead.
Looks like there’s a gator on the Brazos, Ma.
This is magnificent: The Kelmscott Chaucer online.
A phrase like “streaming movie” or “theatrical release” or “documentary podcast” communicates what, where and why with far more precision than gibberish like “content,” and if you want to put everything under one tent, “entertainment” is right there. But studio and streaming executives, who are perhaps the primary users and abusers of the term, love to talk about “content” because it’s so wildly diminutive. It’s a quick and easy way to minimize what writers, directors and actors do, to act as though entertainment (or, dare I say it, art) is simply churned out — and could be churned out by anyone, sentient or not. It’s just content, it’s just widgets, it’s all grist for the mill.
We got new windows in our house today, modern double-glazed windows to relace the single-pane ones that were original to the house (built in 1956). The most immediately noticeable thing: how much quieter the house is now.
Brad East on AI sermons is just outstanding: “Study and writing aren’t a mere means to an end—unfortunate but unavoidable. Both entail a crucial spiritual and intellectual process that should not be circumvented.”
Wes Anderson: “If you work with people at different ages and you’re giving them a lot to do, you can see how it really is so much easier when you’re young: On ‘Moonrise Kingdom,’ we had a lot of people who were 12 and they knew every word of the whole script. It was like we had 11 script supervisors on set.”
Today Angus took his first selfie (with my son). We’re all so proud.
If you’re a Chicagoan, and probably only if you’re a Chicagoan, you’ll appreciate Anders Erickson’s video on Malört — a liqueur that John Hodgman quite accurately describes as tasting like “pencil shavings and heartbreak.”
A little slice of the typographical history of New York City
SO GLAD to see that Francis Spufford’s Cahokia Jazz is out in the UK. I had the privilege of reading drafts, one chapter at a time, and even in that form found it utterly thrilling. Everyone should read it!
I posted a small piece of autobiography from a book I wrote 15 years ago.
What happens when you shoot a 50-year-old roll of film.
If I could make one rule change
- to American football, it would be: eliminate kicking (punts & field goals)
- to NBA basketball, it would be: eliminate time outs
- to top-level soccer, it would be: eliminate VAR
This is gonna take a while. Currently reading: Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann 📚
Good to see this warning from Barney Ronay. A prediction: If Arteta doesn’t significantly reduce Saka’s workload, he’ll be finished as a top player by age 25. It’ll be Jack Wilshere all over again.