Thom's Link Emporium - 0021 - 13 June 2022
I’ll admit it’s been a bit of a strange week I can’t really go into (for work-related reasons), but the sun, cricket and lots of reading has helped, as it always does. I’m always amazed at how just a few moments outside in the sun can refresh me, and I have a cat (Billie) who likes the outside so much that she’ll come and get me every fifteen minutes or so when it’s sunny to be stroked outside (which also works well for your stand target on the Apple Watch - maybe that’s what she has in mind?)
Billie in “stroke me here” position.
Links
Michael Hobbes writes an important reflection on the Amber Heard / Johnny Depp case. I'll lay my cards on the table here: in a clear case of abuse, random strangers are clapping a man who got away with it. It's hard enough to come forward with claims of abuse, but when, even in the land of supposed "free speech" and the first amendment, the law will trample on a woman's ability to describe her abuse, it's terrifying.
I would go further and point out you can make similar arguments for not eating any animals, but this is a persuasive and not very graphic piece on why you shouldn't eat lamb
I'm a sucker for advice lists and Kevin Kelly’s one for his 70th birthday is a good one. Perhaps one of the reasons why I like them is a sort of understanding that the following is true? "Life lessons will be presented to you in the order they are needed. Everything you need to master the lesson is within you. Once you have truly learned a lesson, you will be presented with the next one. If you are alive, that means you still have lessons to learn." I also liked "Speak confidently as if you are right, but listen carefully as if you are wrong."
Writing animals in crime fiction from the perspective of a vet
A Wired interview with a conspiracy theorist who's mostly understood the error of his ways. I think that learning how we deescalate conspiracy thinking will be a key area of study over the coming years.
The first meeting of the Mickey Mouse Club in 1955 will indeed "haunt your nightmares"
Listening
Most music fans will be well aware of Nick Drake, the 1960/70s folk singer who released three spectacular albums, all of which were only truly recognised after his tragic death. A fun fact about Nick Drake is that there is no moving image of him recorded that we’re aware of. Living in an age where there must be video footage of a substantial proportion of the world’s population, the idea that a man who has become a legend has no video footage feels very alien.
However, I’m not writing about Nick Drake, I’m writing about his mother, Molly. She was never famous (even to Nick’s level of fame) during her lifetime, but she recorded enough music at home in the 1950s and 60s that there’s a reasonably large compilation released in the 2010s of her singing. The recording is quite poor, but these were never recorded for release, and if Nick hadn’t become the doomed star he became, I’m sure we would never have heard them.
In Molly’s style and voice, it’s easy to make out a number of melodic, phrasing and songwriting approaches that appear in Nick’s music. What is also extremely clear is how much of a previous generation these songs sound compare to Nick’s. That’s no surprise, they are literally from another generation, but I find Molly’s music brings out the modernity of Nick’s music. This is an interesting effect insofar as Nick’s music has always felt old to me (because he died six years before I was born), but when I revisit it now I can hear the sparkling modernity he brought to folk.
I don’t mean this to sideline Molly’s immense talent, though, these songs are fragile and touching and beautiful in their own right and are well worth checking out. (Spotify, Music)
Reading
Some time ago, I wrote a review of Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley. I can’t find it now, but it wasn’t very good so the frustration is mine rather than yours. What I didn’t realise when I wrote it was how much Aldous Huxley’s creation of the intellectual set living in a stately home was so accurately based on the group he was spending time with that they chucked him out of the group.
If you only know Huxley from Brave New World, this is a very different book, but a good read. You can find more about its writing and Huxley’s expulsion in this article from Lapham’s Quarterly.
Watching
We have reached the period of the year when the vast majority of what I'm watching is cricket. I don't watch it in the same way I watch other TV - I'll often have a book or an article I'm reading through with the cricket on in front of me. I can have a wonderfully relaxing day (depending on the cricket) just drifting in and out of concentration on the game. I highly recommend it.
What I have absolutely no frame of reference for, is what it's like to perform at the top level in a sport, so this description of what it's like to be a top-class batsman (focusing on the Australian batter, Ian Chappell) is a real eye-opener and I suspect would be interested regardless of the sport you're interested in.
"Such an ability more closely resembles the powers of a (fictional) Jedi Knight than those we typically associate with real-world flesh-and-blood athletes. "He can see things before they happen," said the Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn of a nine-year-old boy named Anakin Skywalker. "That's why he appears to have such quick reflexes. It's a Jedi trait." Well, science now tells us that elite batsmen aren't much different: they know where the ball is going to be before it gets there and saccade their vision to that point. That's how they appear to have such quick reflexes."
Quote
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
Jacobus Johannes van der Leeuw