Inordinately pleased with my little hack of hanging the jacket of the album I’m listening to from a binder clip. This record, by the way, is a neglected masterpiece, with Miles as a sideman (if Miles ever actually is a sideman, which I doubt). Also: Blue Note’s design staff in this era! This jacket was designed by the great Reid Miles. 🎵
Currently reading: Middlemarch by George Eliot. This won’t be my last time reading this infinitely lovable book, but it will be my last time teaching it, so I’m warning my students to expect some melancholy moments. 📚
I’m very frustrated by Ezra Klein’s timidity in his interview with Jensen Huang. Ezra seems unaware that Huang is a salesman; he should have conducted the entire interview with that in the forefront of his mind. He offered very little pushback and effectively let Huang make a 2-hour sales pitch for his company and his industry.
Chilling after a nice long walk through the neighborhood, during which two different people I don’t know said “Hi Angus!” So my dog is a local hero as well as an internet celebrity.
When Grant conquered Vicksburg, did Lincoln say, “The Union now controls the full length of the Mississippi River”? He did not. Instead he said, “The Father of Waters flows unvexed to the sea.”
These are just lovely.
European resistance to air conditioning is often framed as a story of puritanical self-flagellation, as an insistence on managing energy crises by a regime of perpetual austerity rather than building out clean, abundant energy sources. But I think this is an over-generous framing driven by pundits who have never had a frivolous bone in their effectively altruistic bodies. Some of us just really hate looking at ugly things, and we’re willing to make you suffer so that we don’t have to.
Even mighty heroes need to have a sit-down now and then.
