Category: micropost

Why Do We Listen to Sad Songs? | The New York Times

This is the paradox of sad music: We generally don’t enjoy being sad in real life, but we do enjoy art that makes us feel that way.

A Few Thoughts on Quentin Tarantino’s Plan to Retire | The New Yorker

Soderbergh knows one big thing, the cinema itself; for him, cinema is everywhere, and it speaks through him no matter what he does. Tarantino has a huge toy chest of knowledge and enthusiasm, an amazing collection of movies from the history of cinema stocked up in his mind; he gives their multiplicity the unity of his voice, his personality, his public image, and he is, so to speak, their delegate, their representative. Soderbergh has an idea of cinema; Tarantino has ideas about individual movies, which is why each one that he makes counts, why each matters so desperately. Soderbergh risks insignificance, merely vanishing; Tarantino risks the illusion of significance, being a nuisance. Soderbergh escaped from Hollywood in order to evade its limitations; Tarantino’s planned escape seems meant to evade his own. The very fear of risk, the sense of pride and even vanity with which he protects his name, could stand as the ultimate form of self-criticism.

I’ve never liked Taratino’s films very much but his stature at the end of 20th century cinema is great, and that time, from roughly 1985–2000 as far as I can tell, was more or less the end of cinema as we knew it, a material art, a physical process, an international conceit, high culture in spite of its commercial interests. Brody’s exposition of Soderbergh rings entirely true for me, as does his reading of Tarantino.

Fate has problems.

— Hollis Frampton

Imagining an Alternative to AI-Supercharged Capitalism | Kottke.org

“Social-media companies use machine learning to keep users glued to their feeds. In a similar way, Purdue Pharma used McKinsey to figure out how to ”turbocharge“ sales of OxyContin during the opioid epidemic. Just as A.I. promises to offer managers a cheap replacement for human workers, so McKinsey and similar firms helped normalize the practice of mass layoffs as a way of increasing stock prices and executive compensation, contributing to the destruction of the middle class in America.” – Ted Chiang

Very happy to see that Laura Olin has resumed her newsletter. It’s always got something worth knowing, and her tone is inspiring, playful, compassionate. One of my favorites.

Making People Uncomfortable Can Now Get You Killed | Roxanne Gay for The New York Times

It’s so very easy to think we are good, empathetic people. But time and time again, people like us, who think so highly of themselves, have the opportunity to stand up and do the right thing, and they don’t. What on earth makes us think that, when the time comes, we will be any different?

900,000 New Yorkers Lost at Least 3 Loved Ones to Covid | The New York Times

Nearly one in four New Yorkers lost at least one person close to them, according to a newly released survey. The toll was even higher among people of color.

Abdul Wadud’s Cosmic Cello Music Gets Another Moment in the Sun | The New York Times

For decades, By Myself, the cellist’s defining statement made in 1977, was out of print. Before his 2022 death, he finalized plans for its first-ever re-pressing.

The Greatest Independent Films of the Twentieth Century | The New Yorker

If Hollywood is identifiable by its exclusions, independent filmmaking offered the chance for a crucial corrective—a realm for female filmmakers, Black filmmakers, and others who, by dint of their identity or their ideas, had no place in the mainstream.