Thom's Link Emporium - 0019 - 30 May 2022

Rain is pouring down outside as I write this, but overall it’s been a reasonably warm week, and I forget each year quite how late the sun sets in May. One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about moving to Wivenhoe is feeling that little bit closer to nature and the passing of the seasons is so clear out here. If you didn’t manage to escape a city in lockdown, I recommend it. Anyway onto the links!

Links

  1. A passenger's one star review of the trolley ride from the trolley problem: "I’ve taken plenty of bus rides where people constantly pull the string, causing the ride to take forever. But I’ve never, in my life, been on a form of public transportation that can suddenly be diverted to a different set of tracks by some random passerby. I don’t want to act like I know all there is to know about the trolley business, but it seems like the trolley route should fall only under the purview of transit authority employees. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think they should have a lever that allows any old idiot to divert the whole group of us to Westport on a whim."

  2. The original Pong video game had no code and was built entirely from hardware circuitry.

  3. One of the key reasons that Russia is failing so badly in Ukraine is the utter contempt they show to their own troops and their families.

  4. The history of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Originally, it was a grumpy old woman who stole the bear's porridge.

  5. John Higgs, who's written some excellent books on William Blake has shared an extract from his most recent book, William Blake vs The World, on the LRB blog and it is an excellent introduction to the charming mystical weirdness of Blake.

  6. AI has trouble recreating "just a nice normal cat" but apparently has little issue with "a centaur except the man part is a jumbo shrimp".

  7. Ted Gioia on the "taxi dance" craze of the 1930s where women would dance with men for 10c and society was scandalised.

Listening

Mr Morale & The Big Steppers - Kendrick Lamar

I've only given this a couple of listens, but I feel it's one of the most accessible of Lamar's albums, especially the first few tracks which feel truly exciting. The rest is great, but probably a little too clunky to really hold a flame to his previous work. (Spotify,  Music)

Reading

I haven’t finished a book this week. I’ve been a bit lax with my book reading of late, and besides I’m reading a lot of great newsletters right now, so here are some other newsletters I'm a big fan of:

  • The Bluestocking - Helen Lewis finds excellent articles and always has some incisive analysis in this weekly, free newsletter.

  • Letters of Note - Shaun Usher has been blogging, tweeting and publishing fascinating letters for years. Now he has a newsletter which shares some of the best examples of letters he’s found.

  • Comment Is Freed - Sam Freedman is a great political commentator (his recent analysis of the local elections was excellent), and his father, Lawrence Freedman, is currently providing some of the best analysis of the war in Ukraine. The latter are free but I pay for this subscription to get more of Sam’s writing.

  • The Honest Broker - I link to Ted Gioia’s newsletter a lot so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that he’s on this list. Gioia’s musical history, especially with jazz, is second to none and his analysis of the music industry, especially the economics of streaming services, has been second to none. Again, I pay for this subscription but there’s an awful lot of free stuff too.

  • The Browser - Only a paid offering for this service, but The Browser will find you five fascinating articles a day, for free. It’s probably the best value service available for anyone who is interested in reading.

  • Garbage Day - A recent subscription for me. Ryan Broderick is an excellent commentator on internet culture, and is ex of Buzzfeed. Garbage Day is a great read and there’s a lot of free content.

Watching

Like a lot of people, I went to see Top Gun: Maverick this week, having had to wait out two years of pandemic before it made it to screens. It’s not the greatest film ever made but it’s probably as good a film as anyone could have expected from a Top Gun sequel. It’s very sympathetic to Tony Scott’s original, and Miles Teller is perfectly cast as Antony Edwards’s and Meg Ryan’s son. The only real difference from the original is that the flight scenes are even more spectacular. Quite an achievement.

Quote

There are so many kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.

Thomas Mann.