Hoopla, the service that's become a public library mainstay for ebooks, has agreed to do more to curb the rampant proliferation of AI slop on its platform. This matters for libraries because they end up paying for what members check out, and if members are checking out junk, often AI-generated summaries of books they're actually looking for, then the libraries' (and therefore our) money is being wasted.
I was thrilled to find in my email this morning an update from 404 Media that was a much-deserved (though still small) victory lap: Their reporting had helped bring about action.
It's a not a total shock that journalism can still do some good in the world, but it's a nice reminder.
From the story:
While the exact details of the plan Hoopla is putting together to prevent low quality AI-generated books from flooding its platform are still not clear, Hoopla emailed librarians again on February 14 to share more information on actions it has already implemented. This includes revising its “collection development policy to ensure we adhere to and evolve with industry best practices,” offering librarians better ways to manage the Hoopla catalog by contacting Hoopla directly, and the removal of all “summary titles from all vendors, with some exceptions,” such as HMH Books, the publisher of the popular CliffNotes series. 404 Media also obtained a copy of this second email.
Shoutout to 404 Media for making the world a slightly better place.
I really enjoyed this peek behind the curtain of The Tournament of Books from one of its participants, John Warner. In his newsletter, Biblioracle, he gave a brief background of ToB (which I mentioned recently when I highlighted their shortlist and bracket for this year’s tournament) and his own participation in it as a “color commentator” who comes in “after the judge has rendered their verdict to offer additional thoughts and insights into that day’s competition.”
He also told how the entire newsletter, which includes a fun bit where he allows readers to send him an email with their five most-recent books they’ve read and he responds with a recommendation. Such a cool hook, and I could only wish I were well read enough to offer such a service. Anyhoo, that grew out of a stray comment he made while commenting on the ToB one year.
Even cooler was this passage:
Not long after that last live session Kevin pitched me as a columnist for a new books section for the Chicago Tribune (Printers Row), and I’ve been writing weekly for the paper ever since, continuing even as Printers Row ceased to exist.
This is one of the stories I tell when young people come to me and ask about how to make a career as a writer, though even I don’t know what conclusions to draw from it other than have friends, try stuff, see what other people respond to, rinse and repeat ad infinitum.
Those were just some of the cool things I took from this post. But it’s really about what makes for an ideal book review. I really liked his “formula,” if you will.
He pulled not from his own pile of criticism, but from one of the head-to-head competitions from the 2020 ToB, where The New Yorker’s Helen Rosner judged the face-off between Sally Rooney’s Normal People and Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman is in Trouble.
I especially liked his first step: Positioning.
Essentially, positioning answers an unstated, but important audience question: Where are you coming from on this particular deal? The context is useful because we’re heading towards a judgement, a determination, and this kind of background may be relevant to how the audience ultimately takes in the writer’s communication.
Sometimes in working with students I’ll substitute “baggage” for positioning, but same thing. What is it that you, specifically, bring to this experience that may be relevant to the judgement we’re about to read?
Additionally, we see the judge’s internal process at work. Positioning makes the internal thought process both transparent to the audience and visible to the writer themselves. This is very important and useful stuff.
I know some schools of thought abhor the introduction of the critic’s life or subjective existence to bleed onto the page let alone get prime placement. But I have always found that the more honest form of criticism: If you want to know how I experienced a piece of art, surely you don’t expect me to pretend that happens in a vacuum. I’m the sum of my experiences, my upbringing, the time in my life in which I encountered the work, where I was living at the time, who I was dating, and quite possibly what I’d had for lunch the day I wrote the review. It’s all relevant, and it’s my sincere belief that a skillful critic is one who can find a way to discuss those things without boring the reader or losing the thread of why it could possibly matter to the evaluation of the art.
On April 10th of this year, F. Scott Fitzgerald's American masterpiece The Great Gatsby will turn 100 years old.
To celebrate, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society has begun a reading series where famous writers each take a turn reading a chapter. Each week, a new writer will add their voice and chapter, and the final entry will arrive on the book's centennial.
Jonathan Franzen kicked things off with Chapter 1.
Basically just short-circuiting all my weekly newsletters by boiling it down to a once-a-year announcement. But you cannot go wrong with these nominees. Many of them I've already shared, but it's always exciting to see many that I've missed or overlooked.
(I assume it was just an oversight that Critical Linking wasn't nominated in the newsletter category, but we'll forgive them.)
It's been a little over a year now since I was last kayaking in the ocean, off the coast of Cape Town, and the whole point of the outing was to kayak alongside these darling little dolphins. Which we did, and it was amazing.
So I will never not be captivated by videos that fit into this very specific niche: Whale eats a kayaker and spits them out.
When I think back on zooming around on the water, I cannot begin to tell you how never, not once did it cross my mind that a whale could gobble us up. I'm fairly confident I never even thought about that Slate article. And it probably wasn't a possibility based on where we were, seeing a video like this reminds me of my very sensible fear of the ocean.
Not for nothing, the guy filming this perhaps the calmest man in what could have been an emergency? He doesn't react or say a thing until talking to the kayaker after he resurfaces—just gives out reassurances and instructions to get back on the kayak. Next-level stuff.
Some of my favorite newsletters to which I subscribe are from The Morning News, a daily roundup of links and news, and Field Notes, the wonderful notebook brand.
They have a partnership to present one of the best bits of literary culture on the internet: The Tournament of Books.
For those unfamiliar with the tournament, here's a quick description:
Here’s how the Tournament works. Each weekday, starting March 6, two books from the shortlist are read and evaluated by one of our judges. One book is chosen to advance to the next round, and the judge explains how they came to their decision, then the commentariat—folks like you—express their feelings and thoughts about that decision and the books themselves. And the next day we do it all over again. This goes on through the month of March, until our championship match, where all our judges convene to decide which of the finalists wins the Tournament of Books, and with it our prize, the Rooster. (No one’s ever accepted the actual live rooster we offer them, fwiw.)
Here's a link to the 2025 Shortlist, bracket, and judges (plus the limited edition Field Notes 2025 Rooster Book):
It's a snow day here in Columbia, so I'm taking comfort in warm, cozy videos, and I'm absolutely loving baker Martin Philip's clear, easy-to-follow instructions. Also, something about his slight accent feels like home to me. I saw a commenter say, as a Memphian, they noticed the accent as well and discovered Martin is from Arkansas, which would absolutely track.
This French bread is probably the first I'll attempt, but I've watched so many of his videos now.
I remember being swept up by The Queen's Gambit just like everyone else who saw it. Finishing an episode and being like, "I wish I could play chess at some otherworldly level."
But it's a different TV depiction of chess that came to mind when I saw this Atlas Obscura story about hand-carved Indian chess sets:
He gives the background of some of the sets, and though it's not lingered on for long, you do notice what beautiful pieces of work they are. I have no idea if the sets were plausible for what and where they were supposed to have originated, but I liked looking at them.
The Atlas Obscura piece seemed perfectly aimed at me, as if to say, "Are you fascinated by chess but don't have the brain for it? We got you."
But then I remembered I'm no woodworker, either. And never will be, at least not at these levels:
Of all the chessmen, knights are considered the most difficult and require the most skill to carve. While pawns and other pieces can be shaped under lathes, the knights—resembling horse heads usually with wild flowing manes—are carved completely by hand. A chess carver won’t graduate from pawn to knight or any easier piece to harder ones, but instead will learn his craft from the start of his career, usually from their father or a mentor from one of the well-established chess companies. Surinder Pal, a knight carver at the Chess Empire, learned from his father at 18 years old. Now, he has been working on the craft for over 35 years. With his advanced and highly specialized skill, he can make up to 30 simple knights a day, or spend up to three days on a single ornate knight.
That's essentially the gist of this Ars Technics article about a new app, WikiTok, that seeks to break our addiction to algorithm-induced incessant scrolling. It mimics the endless scroll of TikTok, but it's just repackaged Wikipedia entries cut down to bite-sized nuggets.
I have my doubts that our solution to such behavior can be found in yet another app, but this one is a fun alternative to all the ways we'll inevitably spend time mindlessly on our phones.
It's a neat way to stumble upon interesting information randomly, learn new things, and spend spare moments of boredom without reaching for an algorithmically addictive social media app. Although to be fair, WikiTok is addictive in its own way, but without an invasive algorithm tracking you and pushing you toward the lowest-common-denominator content. It's also thrilling because you never know what's going to pop up next.
I did it. I finally completed the Twin Peaks Experience: Seasons One and Two of the original; Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me, and now Twin Peaks: The Return.
At this point, I’m still not able to call myself a David Lynch completist, but this was a meaningful step toward that goal. It’s quite frankly a lot to sit through and take in, not just from the tough subject matter and headspace it puts you into but also for the sheer lack of definitive narrative. It’s a lot of just watching and experiencing where “understanding” is a relative concept.
I think some of the fun about this type of work is being able to discuss it. Not in a mystery box way but just a downloading of what stuck with you. It doesn’t really work if someone else isn’t going through the experience with you, which is why I’ve found this collection of podcasts to be really enjoyable companion pieces to the viewing.
Since the College Football Playoff crowned its national champion last month and last night wrapped up the NFL season in a lopsided Super Bowl, I won't be thinking much about football for a while.
As I transition into the part of the year in which I downgrade my football thoughts from "Some, every now and then" to "None at all," I really enjoyed this video from WIRED on questions about the sport answered by a historian.
You'll find no breakdown of next year predictions or draft prospects or fantasy league recommendations. It's just full of fun questions that we've mostly made our peace with not knowing.
One of my favorite questions answered was "Why is it called a 'touchdown'?" I didn't love it for any burning desire to know the answer, but rather because my very South African girlfriend will, from time to time when watching a game, remember that she finds the name infuriating because they do no such thing as "touch it down" like her beloved rugby boys do when they score a try. She grouses about this, and it's one of my favorite repeating bits in our relationship.
One of the random stocking stuffers I got for Courtney was a 4K edition of Casino Royale. Not because she's any big James Bond fan. Partly because it's an inside joke to make any reference to physical media, of which she says I have way too much. But mostly it was because the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra is hosting a screening of the film in the spring where they score the film live. I knew she'd love the music of it all, so it was an easy choice.
Not wasting any time, we popped it for a movie night, and let me tell you folks, it was awesome. Who wouldn't want more of that? The fans certainly do, which is why the stewards of this precious IP are taking their sweet time. This Airmail piece looks at the tangled web of factors that might be slowing down the suave super spy's return to the silver screen.
I've been listening to the audiobooks of John le Carré's anti-James Bond spy, George Smiley and loving them. It's gritty and real, smart and satisfying. But I like the popcorn-flick appeal of 007 as much as anybody. I've been missing him, and I've put a lot of trust in "James Bond Will Return."
It's here. The day I've been waiting for months now. True/False Film Fest has released which films it will be screening this year, and I can't wait for it to get here.
I wrote that title/headline trying to inhabit the tone and voice of the characters in the film, in which a family moves into a house only to find it haunted by a ghost. For those of us in the audience, the movie-going appeal of this time-honored premise is that it was 1) directed by auteur Steven Soderbergh and 2) it was shot entirely in the first-person perspective of the ghost.
Upon reading it back, I realized it could be read as criticism of the film, which, after having listened to the spirited debate on The Filmcast episode dedicated to the movie, seemed like a fortuitous mistake that I decided to keep.
Note: The feature review begins about an hour into the episode and there is a separate spoiler section if you don't want to hear the film's ending discussed.
I'm still trying to decide what I think of the film. I thought it was going to be a true horror film, but it wasn't (in case you're not a big horror fan and have been using that as your reason for avoiding it). Perhaps there's a bit of tension in not knowing exactly what this ghost can do, but otherwise, it's more accurately described as rather serious domestic drama with a large cast of unlikeable characters.
But the conceit of the film was something I was excited about: the first-person POV. Like many things with Soderbergh, he can make it look pretty effortless, perhaps disguising the technical allure of the film (as a storyteller, I'm sure he wouldn't want us to be focused on the camera in such a meta way).
The New Yorker's Richard Brody explored the importance of Soderbergh's deployment of this (potentially) gimmicky exercise and found it not only no gimmick but very much necessary.
Comparing it to RaMell Ross's use of the same conceptual technique (though I'd argue harder to pull off than Soderbergh's) in Nickel Boys, Brody said:
But Ross employs his method to create a depth of subjectivity that matches Whitehead’s language, and an intense physicality that surpasses the familiar tropes of cinematic representation. With “Presence,” the eye of the ghost is a matter not of representation but of plot—subtract the subjective camerawork that incarnates an increasingly active spirit, and there’s no movie.
I have loved so much of the focus on Saturday Night Live's 50th anniversary. It's everywhere, from last year's slight miss of a film to documentaries and news coverage.
One of my favorite thus far has been this New York Times piece on the sketch comedian's greatest sin: breaking.
That simple act—laughing—is the whole point of the sketch in the first place, but it's a joy to be experienced only from the outside looking in, never the inside looking out.
Lorne Michaels hates it, so they say. I get it; it lacks a certain professionalism.
But it amuses me more than it ever annoys me. To laugh at something, to really lose yourself over to it, is one of the best feelings in the world. And to try (valiantly, sometimes) to stop from crossing that line feels like you're being asked to withstand torture.
It's this wildly human thing we do, and it feels as mysterious upon reflection as it felt instinctual in the moment. What was it about that joke, that sound, the observation, that struck a nerve and tickled our funny bones? Is it magic? Is it reflex? What allows us all to do it at the same time at a comedy show? Or, perhaps even more curious, what causes us to do it when nobody else joins in?
I just love it. No more so when these professionals do it. It feels like an acknowledgement of this silly thing they do, of recognizing the contagiousness of a laugh, and saying, "Yeah, me too. That shit was funny."
He didn't disappoint when talking about the tragic midair collision of American Airlines Flight 5342 and an Army helicopter as the jet was on approach at Washington, D.C.'s Reagan National Airport.
Video of the crash showed a fiery explosion, and both aircrafts crashed into the Potomac River. All 64 people aboard the jet and the helicopter's three-person crew were killed.
The manual was declassified by the CIA in 2008, and in recent days, it's surged up the list of downloads from Project Gutenberg.
It offers up "ways to train normal people to be purposefully annoying telephone operators, dysfunctional train conductors, befuddling middle managers, blundering factory workers, unruly movie theater patrons, and so on. In other words, teaching people to do their jobs badly."
Some gems:
“Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.”
“Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.”
“‘Misunderstand’ orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders. Quibble over them when you can.”
Plus my personal favorite, which would be my biggest contribution to the resistance:
“Make ‘speeches.’ Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your ‘points’ by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate ‘patriotic’ comments.”
I could bring the entire system down from the inside using this one.
404 Media had a pretty good idea why it might be so popular right now, and I tend to agree with them:
It is impossible to say why this book is currently going viral at this moment in time and why it may feel particularly relevant to a workforce of millions of people who have suddenly been asked to agree to be “loyal” and work under the quasi leadership of the world’s richest man, have been asked to take a buyout that may or may not exist, have had their jobs repeatedly denigrated and threatened, have suddenly been required to return to office, have been prevented from spending money, have had to turn off critical functions that help people, and have been asked to destroy years worth of work and to rid their workplaces of DEI programs.
Yesterday was a big day for Bookshop, the independent bookseller built as an alternative to Amazon. It's thrived in the realm of physical books, but it hadn't previously offered e-books. Well, it does now.
Now the task for e-book fans is to find an e-reader that's not a Kindle. This is a tougher challenge because Kindles are great products and work seamlessly with Amazon's book offerings. But for those eager to divest from our over-dependence on Amazon, this is a great problem to have.
I loved this peek into Robert Caro's home library, where, as if floor-to-ceiling shelves aren't enough, his have secret set of shelves behind the outward-facing ones, which is just about as cool as a library can get.
I'm a sucker for the Academy Awards, even though they're often nonsensical and flat-out wrong in terms of what's deserving of attention and praise.
But I can't help but grade my year's worth of viewing based on what's announced in the nominations. On the one hand, I like to pat myself on the back and say, "Yeah, I've seen that. I know the film or the performance." And on the other, I like the sense of "Here's what to watch before the ceremony."
It's never a given that I'll have had a chance to see everything, as living in Middle America sometimes means films don't come nearby.
Of the 10 Best Picture nominees, I've seen all but two (one of which—The Brutalist—I'll see tomorrow). Not too shabby. I'm Still Here is my other blindspot at this time.
For the acting categories, I'm only missing The Brutalist and Sing Sing, which has also just now come to our local arthouse theater, so I'm hoping that's taken care of by this weekend.
In the screenplay categories, I'm missing Sing Sing and September 5.
Overall, not too much homework left before the Oscars ceremony on March 2.
So with journaling (and writing) in mind, I was thrilled to find this roundup of favorite products from JetPens, the internet's one-stop shop for writing supplies.
I love everything about it. I love the products. I love the thoughtful categories (even though some of them are nonsense, such as a separate one for students, as if their writing is different from yours or mine?). I love the seriousness with which they take the whole project—the write-ups, the photos, the if-you-liked-this-try-these connections they make for us. Pens are the best. Pen people are the beset. Wishing you happy writing in 2025.
His influences are wide-ranging, and I think this glimpse at some of the artists he'd love to work with speaks volumes about his sound:
Mount Rushmore of artists you would love to collaborate with?
Abraham: What’s crazy is I’ve already collaborated with two of them! Another one would be John Legend—I absolutely love him. Then there’s Jon Batiste, and John Bellion—three Johns! John Ian, from New York, is another incredible artist and producer. Oh, and Norah Jones would be amazing too. I’d say those individuals for now. So, if you’ve got a 'J' name, I want to work with you!
I didn’t know Alexander’s work until the fall of 2023. While in Louisville, Kentucky, I attended a small concert by St. Paul and the Broken Bones, maybe my third (?) time to see them. For their opening act, a lone man with a guitar: Alexander.
I really loved what he was doing, and after a few songs, I knew I wanted to have his album. I went to the merch table and purchased it in vinyl.
A little while later, the man was standing at the table, talking to fans and signing autographs. I couldn’t resist.
He penned a lovely thank you for supporting his work, and I’ve spun that record quite a few times, probably more than any other vinyl across the past year. It’s kind of a perfect easy-listening soul-inflected album.
Bright Wall/Dark Room unlocked its entire Issue 51, dedicated to the great director. Some great essays thinking about and discussing one of the most enigmatic and original director in cinema history.
I was rejected from a job with a company that previously laid me off. It was a demoralizing blow, another in a long line of rejections but stung especially since I was hoping my previous employment there would win the day.
I needed a distraction. I knew just the thing: Den of Thieves 2: Pantera. As I prepared to make my way, I discovered my car battery was dead; the endless cold was just too much for it.
My driveway is angled down, with two high retaining walls on either side—one along my lawn, the other along the neighbors'. Basically, it's impossible to get a car in a position to jump the battery off.
I turned to Courtney's car. It would be my salvation, and after the film, I'd go to Lowe's to get a jump-start power station. I tried to pull Courtney's car away from the curb and—I couldn't move. It was basically snowed/iced in place, its low clearance no match for the mounds that had been pushed toward it from the street's center. So back inside I go, in search of a shovel. I have to dig the car out.
A few sweaty moments later, I'm on my way to the cinema, and the film is exactly what I needed: a big dumb heist movie that let me just turn my brain off for a while.
Afterwards, at Lowe's, I realize I've walked in two minutes before closing. I rush to the aisle, and I see the various battery-related products. Instead of just buying the one I initially saw in my search, I was seduced by one that was a bit cheaper. I decided to get it, and I rushed out without paying too much more attention.
I get home, and I quickly realize that I've messed up: I've bought a battery charger, not a jump-starter power station. To use the one I'd bought, I would need to have the device plugged into an outlet while attached to the battery. This wasn't what I'd wanted at all.
But, I thought, there is a garage at the bottom of this slanted driveway. It's got an old manual door that opens into a tiny, low-ceilinged garage that I don't often use unless it's going to hail. I think to myself, "Maybe I can salvage this if I can put the vehicle in neutral and guide it into the garage." So I go back outside to give this a try.
For the second time in a few hours' time, I'm shoveling. I figure since it will just be me pushing and gravity pulling, I didn't want any big snow banks or chunks of ice to get in my way. A few sweaty minutes later, I'm satisfied I've done about as well as I can.
I get in the car and try to turn it on in order to move the gear shift into neutral. The battery struggles and fails, but there's enough power to allow me to move the gear shift into neutral. Once there, I realize that the steering wheel is pretty well locked up, and I don't think I'm going to be able to do this Plan B.
Dammit. Oh well, I think. No harm, no foul. At least I tried.
But then I got caught in some kind of shitty feedback loop, where there was not enough power (or something more technically complicated was happening), and I could not get the gear shift back into park. Unable to get the vehicle back into park (or again, something more technically complicated was going on), I could not actually turn the vehicle all the way off.
The instrument panel is lighting up like a Vegas slot machine, and then my headlights and tail lights start flickering and blinking and all the while there's this clicking that makes me think I might just be sitting on a time bomb of some sort.
A quick Google search for how to shift the gears when the battery is dead leads me to a small little plastic place covering a hole, in which is supposedly a button that, if pushed with an flat-head screwdriver, would allow me to shift the gear even though the battery is dead. Well, I found everything but the button under the plastic cover. Didn't stop me from sticking a screwdriver in there in a real let's-see-what-happens mindset, and what do you know? That also doesn't work, plus I hear an unsettling crack sound that makes me fear I've messed something up more than when I started.
Finally, I give up. I put the parking brake on, and I go get Courtney's keys yet again and set out, this time to Walmart since Lowe's is already closed. In the hellscape that is Walmart after 10 p.m. when it closes at 11, I could find no one to help me get the actual device I needed out of its theft-proof glass case. A trip to the front of the store to ask for help yielded a "Well send someone back there." I waited, and you guessed it—nobody came. I went back to electronics, which had previous been devoid of workers, and found two this time. Told them my plight and they made a call that I could actually hear over the store's intercom system. Finally, a little gremlin of a man approached and helped me out. While we searched for a register at which he could ring me up, he was telling me some story about how a certain register in the automotive section didn't like him, so we'd just use this one over in sporting goods. And then he told me that he'd essentially stolen from the store by taking cash for purchases and not actually ringing it up.
"Yeah, sometimes someone will just give me like $200 cash and I won't even ring it in," he said. I nodded along politely and gave him a good-for-you smile, but then I wondered, "Is he making a soft pitch to me for a similar arrangement? Well, I hope not, because this thing's only $100."
And upon ringing it up, it ended up even cheaper at somewhere in the $80s (not sure if that was the doing of the little gremlin man or just regular good luck, but I was happy for it), but let me tell you, folks: The EverStart Maxx 1200-Amp Power Station is worth every penny.
Once I got the thing home and charged it for a little while, it was the only thing to be hassle-free on a Monday from hell. I hooked it onto the battery and it was nearly instantaneous that I could now crank the car and finally cure all the ping-ponging lights on my instrument panel.
If you're living in a cold part of the country and know that some of the colder day of winter may still be ahead of you, I can't recommend this little addition to your garage more highly. It saved my battery, but more importantly, my sanity.
I'm admittedly new to tennis. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't have opinions on different brands of tennis balls.
We've settled into being a "Dunlop household," favoring the brand's ATP Championship Extra Duty (fitting since it's the tournament ball for the Australian Open which starts today). Before that, we'd preferred Wilson's U.S. Open Extra Duty. We leveled up to the U.S. Open from Wilson's Championship Extra Duties. We bought a goo-gob of Penn Extra Duties because they were so affordable, but fresh out of the can, we felt they lacked a certain pop and bounce; now they've been relegated to my piss-poor serving practice.
It's with this rank amateur's experience that I read this exploration of the question from Defector.
It's an interesting piece that entertains complaints from various players, but most relevantly, it contains a fairly frank and revealing interview with a marketing vice president at Penn. He doesn't shy away from the reality that the pandemic's disruptions definitely contributed to some quality issues (though he says they've since been squared away), and he posits a handful of other potential issues that might account for some of the players' complaints that, he thinks, are being unfairly placed on the ball.
The question doesn't get a definitive answer, but the piece explores a lot of ground before coming to the conclusion that perhaps the very act of asking "Have the balls gotten worse?" put the idea in the heads of players who already tend toward neuroses when it comes to what could be negatively affecting their games.
More generally: Do you know how balls are actually made? I didn't until I read this:
To create a tennis ball,two separate rubber ball halves are filled with compressed air and fused under high temperature with a heat-activated glue. The resulting rubber sphere is abraded, then coated in a different glue, then wrapped in flaps of that yellow-green felt covering. A third glue, applied to the edges of the felt, forms the white seams we see on the surface of the ball.
After reading it, I went looking for what the process actually looks like. It's oddly satisfying to watch, and it's wild to think this factory churns out these balls 24 hours a day.
I've been fascinated by the concept of "Quitter's Day." Mostly because I'd never heard of it until this year, but anecdotally, I can totally relate to how the day got its name.
I think the part of me that relates to it all too well is a bit bummed to realize the day was only two Fridays into January, though I'm quite certain I've quit many a resolution by this point.
I enjoyed David Epstein's post about it in his wonderful newsletter, Range Widely.
There, he has a conversation about goals and goal-setting and stick-to-it-ness with economist and journalist Tim Harford.
I especially like one small part of the chat where Epstein draws a connection between goal-setting and research he'd done on the rhetorical strategies of Martin Luther King, Jr.
DE: He uses a lot of concepts and analogies repeatedly, with slight variations, and one that comes up is Odysseus versus Orpheus. Odysseus lashed himself to the ship's mast to avoid giving in to the song of the sirens. Whereas Orpheus, in one myth, used his beautiful music to drown out the sirens' song instead of restraining himself. And in another myth, during his journey to the underworld to retrieve his love, he used his music to charm Hades. So King would talk about not aiming for the absence of hate, but rather working for the presence of love. And I think that's just a very interesting concept in general, of not just getting rid of a thing you don't like or restraining yourself, but replacing it with something or promoting something that's better or more attractive.
It's a beautiful strategy when applied to King's rhetoric, but a really valuable mindset to carry into New Year's resolutions as well: Simply saying "I want less of the bad stuff" isn't nearly as powerful as saying "I want more of the good stuff."
I didn’t watch the funeral service for former president Jimmy Carter yesterday, but I thoroughly enjoyed this interview between John Heilemann and James Fallows, who, at 27, worked for Carter as the youngest White House speechwriter ever. Heilemann’s podcast, Impolitic, is one of my favorites, so this was like catnip for me.
He’s an infinitely interesting fella, and his assessment of Carter’s legacy and insights into our current political landscape is invaluable. I’m just a huge fan.
I rewatched Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City last night. Not for any real reason other than Peacock told me it was leaving soon, which, in the age of crippling indecision brought on by near limitless choices, I find incredibly helpful to actually stop scrolling and just pick something.
I think I might have put the film on once before when it first came to the steamer, but I’m not even sure I finished it or was actually watching all that closely. For all intents and purposes, I essentially had not seen it since Courtney and I went to see it at Ragtag, the local arthouse theater here in Columbia.
Man, what a great movie. That’s what has gone overlooked. I rarely need reason to remember that I’m enamored by Anderson’s work, but during the week that my mom visited us in Columbia, we spent one night settled in watching my Criterion Collection edition of The Grand Budapest Hotel. We lingered a bit on the behind-the-scenes extras after it was over, and it was mesmerizing to see the images come together.
I found a similar short video, hosted on the awesome Kodak Youtube channel, of how Anderson and Co. made the fictional town of Asteroid City. I love everything about it, and the fact that it’s Kodak, celebrating work shot on film, makes it even better.
But in watching the film, one might resonate with one character’s cry: “I still don’t understand the play.”
It’s a layered meta textual film, and it definitely rewards repeat viewings. But I really enjoyed this Thomas Flight video essay about the meaning of the film. There are times when the explanation gets a bit convoluted (by his own admission), but I think he lands on a (if not necessarily the) fundamental truth of the film.
I love the contemplation of how the artist’s life experiences and emotions find new life through the characters they create and inhabit. It’s how we connect so deeply with well-crafted writing and performances: There is universality in the hyper specific, and if we want others to feel through our works, it pays off hugely to mine our lives for the realest parts of ourselves.
Since tomorrow is Quitter’s Day, the second Friday in January and the day by which upwards of 80% of people will have given up on their New Year’s resolutions, I thought I’d share a simple little guide for those of you who, like me, might be trying to do more journaling in 2025.
I found the act of collaging (also one of the tips from the article) helpful in allowing me to be creative with a touch of randomness thrown in and overcome the inertia inspired by the blank first page.
On my most recent trip to Tennessee, I was looking for something in my dad’s old workspace, and I came across these canvas tool bags made by Klein.
They were just sitting on a shelf, two of them stuffed into the third, and I immediately wanted them. For what purpose, I didn’t know. But I asked my mom if she would care if I had them, and when she said she didn’t, they came back to Columbia with me.
I don’t know if I’m necessarily a natural fit to have these bags, considering their purpose. I’m not exactly the handy type (though a part of me desperately wishes I were). It was (to me) a running joke when my dad (probably not joking) would say he had the perfect gift idea for me: a drill, a miter saw, or some highly specific tool he’d been talking about recently for some project he was doing.
I always laughed it off, said I didn’t want or need anything like that, and that if I had to guess, he was just suggesting it so he could “borrow” it from me. He’d laugh, but also say that everybody needs a fill-in-the-blank.
I didn’t have it in me to get through the question to my mom, but part of me desperately wanted to ask: Did he ever say anything about having a nincompoop for a son when it comes to tools?
I think I’ll continue to struggle with the differences between him and me, wondering, pointlessly, what life and our relationship might have been like if I were a little bit more handy, a little bit more inclined to such things, a little bit more like my little brother.
I couldn’t get the question out because I couldn’t overcome choking on the words and stifling tears at the same time, but on another level, I knew the question would be fruitless. Because I don’t actually think my dad ever said anything about me being a dunderhead with tools. I don’t think he thought, and even if he had, I don’t think he was the type to put words to it.
I just wanted something positive and affirming of our differences, something from him, that recognized we seemed to be cut from different cloth but how that was OK all the same, that he never looked at it as a failing of mine or wished I were any different.
In reality, I should take more solace in the part of me that knows the thoughts and comments weren’t in him because that is all the proof I need that he didn’t feel that way. But call it a fathers-and-sons thing: We want something, anything, after they’re gone to tell us they didn’t make nearly as much out of our perceived shortcomings as we did. To feel seen for what we are and what we aren’t and loved anyway.
As you may be able to deduce, we didn’t say the deeper, harder things. It wasn’t our way, but there is a part of me that wishes it had been. We said the big things, the “miss yous” and “I love yous,” but in those dwindling days, I couldn’t get through big speeches to unload all that I’d never get a chance to say again.
And when I didn’t, it led to all sorts of wonderings, pitiful yearnings to uncover something that might feel like an unspoken trove on his side of things, too. Even when asking would have been sad and largely unfair to my mom, who likely wouldn’t have had an answer and would have seen me wrestling with my emotions, trying to figure out what to say (and probably becoming quite sad herself).
All of that to say: I really just like these rugged, colorful bags. Looking at them makes me miss my dad, but they also make me feel close to him, like a little bit of him resides in his possessions. I know I feel that way about the gifts he gave me. Having them close is a comfort, and that’s not nothing. The bags don’t have anything in them just yet, but I’m thinking perhaps some art supplies, which make possible hobbies that Dad and I actually did share.
And who knows? Maybe one day I’ll know what I’m doing well enough to justify buying so many tools that these bags, sure to stand the test of time, might just be the perfect home for them.
“Attention, where we put our conscious thoughts in any given moment, is the substance of life,” he writes.
Hayes acknowledged much in our world is set up to dominate our attention, but more importantly for those of us who may wish to exert a little more control over our attentions, we must recognize the bit inside of us that wants our attention to be taken, the part he calls “the unsettled self.”
That unsettled self is what powers this “attention age,” where so many things fight and clamor for ours; companies are delivering products and experiences that know we long to be distracted, to be consumed by anything but our own thoughts.
Hayes cites philosopher Blaise Pascal, who called such inward thoughts and meditations one’s “own chamber.”
“When I have occasionally set myself to consider the different distractions of men,” Pascal observed in “Pensées,” his collection of essays published in 1670, “I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.”
Hayes laments a practice that besets me, too: listening to podcasts. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing, but the use of it as a crutch certainly can’t be good.
Years ago, podcasts came to fill my ears during my walks, conditioning me to feel a little panicked without one.
This is exactly how I feel. I catch myself, even when just doing some chores around the house, pausing things to go find AirPods and selecting something to listen to, as if the few moments of doing a particular task in silence were going to be end of the world.
All of this made me think of some of my favorite parts of Lynda Barry’s Syllabus, which I recently finished.
When describing what her students should put in their composition notebooks, she wrote:
What goes into your dairy are things that you noticed when you became present—that is to say when the hamster wheel of thoughts and plans and worries stopped long enough for you to notice where you were and what was going on around you.
I see a lot of connection between Hayes’s points and how they’re keeping me from what Barry expected from her students: My inability to sit in my own chamber isn’t just robbing me of precious alone time but it’s also affecting how I interact with (or, more and more, fail to interact with) the outside world.
I’m going to try to make a point to follow her advice on keeping a daily diary because it’s a solid checklist to make sure you’re still an active participant in the world.
What You Did
Start by noticing what you notice as you go about your day, you DO things—sometimes intentionally and other times by accident.
What You Saw
You may find yourself staring at something for “no reason,” a label on a bottle of juice, a pigeon, a wisp of hair on the nape of someone’s neck—or you may see something spectacular: a fight or a fire or an accident.
Something You Heard Someone Say
And listen to what people are saying—overheard conversations are fu ll of good lines. Pay attention to how people really speak. Write down what they say.
I wasted no time getting back there in the new year.
I saw Robert Egger’s newest film, Nosferatu. As I said in my Letterboxd review, I appreciated the craft of the film more than I enjoyed the storytelling/narrative experience of watching it.
I thoroughly enjoyed the Big Picture episode dedicated to the film, vampire films more generally, and an interview with Robert Eggers. He’s an incredibly thoughtful filmmaker, and the degree of research he did to make the film is genuinely impressive.
This one shouldn't come as any surprise, considering my love of the press and my time as a professional journalist. But since I left the paper, I don't have a home filled with slowly yellowing newsprint anymore. Sure, I have many print copies of my old stories, but I haven't been a regular subscriber of a print newspaper in a minute.
I just picked up the massive Sunday edition of The New York Times, and I just love the heft of it. Before I knew it, the entire interior of my car smelled like newsprint.
I'll just say it: Daily newspapers are a miracle. I wish there were more of them. Seeing this one definitely makes me interested in the Times home delivery options that are less than every day, either the Friday, Saturday, Sunday option or just the Sunday one. Either way, I feel like I want to make print a bigger part of my life in 2025.
This one will serve a particular purpose: After reading through it, I think it will be repurposed as wrapping paper. It cost me $6, which is on par with any wrapping paper you'd get at Target, but this one tells me about the world, entertaining me while educating me. What's not to love?
Like any gifted musician, there are flourishes of genius that can feel thrown off and had you not been there to see it, you wouldn't even know you'd missed out on it. That's the joy and ephemeral nature of live music and improvisation.
A small obsession with this concept started with this incredible clip from an interview with Chris Wallace.
Too often, that's it. Even though it wasn't live music for me, watching at home on CNN or here on YouTube, there was nothing to suggest that this was something Batiste hadn't dreamed up on the spot, a riff that simply came to him as he was proving a point.
There are other examples of this for me. For example, the way Stevie Wonder sings "It's Your Thing" by The Isley Brothers at the beginning of Questlove's documentary Summer of Soul. (It's about 3:30 minutes into the film, if you're interested.) Something about it—the groove of it, the tone of his voice, all of it—got to me on a deep level, and I couldn't stop thinking about it. I wanted to find it, but there was no longer recording to be had.
Another is from the documentary The Greatest Night in Pop, about the recording of "We Are The World." The film's various talking heads are remembering the night, and they talk about the moments in between takes, where Ray Charles would sit at the piano and bang out these remixed gospel-y versions of "We Are The World." I was captivated by this and couldn't help but wishing there was such a version, but of course, there isn't. It was nothing more than a genius noodling around. (This moment happens at about minute 56 in the film, right before an endearing anecdote about how Charles needed to go to the restroom and, of all people, Stevie Wonder said he'd show him the way. I'd clearly found this moment so rewatchable (for both the gospel rendition and the story) that when I pulled up the film in Netflix to check the time stamp, the film was already at the precise moment in the film from the last time I'd gone looking for it.)
After seeing Batiste play that mash-up of Beethoven and blues/gospel above, I was already resigned to it being another in the list of "I wish that were an official Thing and not just something I heard once."
But sometimes the universe just delivers.
Imagine my joy when, about two weeks ago, Batiste released Beethoven Blues, an 11-song album of remixed classics (with a promising "Vol. 1" on the cover that makes me hope there's more where that came from).
This is such a stunning collection of images. And a reminder of the value of newsrooms staffed with talented professionals.
Some that caught my eye:
The container ship Dali rests against the wreckage of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge on the Patapsco River, on March 27, 2024, as seen from Pasadena, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Elise Mertens, of Belgium, serves against Naomi Osaka, of Japan, at the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament, on March 11, 2024, in Indian Wells, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
Lava flows from a volcanic eruption that started on the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland, Nov. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Marco di Marco)
Check out the entire collection to see a brief snapshot of 2024.
I took some pictures while walking across campus to the library tonight and liked the way they looked. Behold, Francis Quadrangle, the Columns, and Jesse Hall in all their glory.
My favorite podcast app, Pocket Casts, sent its version of a year-in-review feature, and it's one of my favorite things.
It's fun to see my year in podcast-listening documented and categorized for me, since I don't include podcast episodes in my culture diaries (though I'm toying with the idea of starting).
I listened to a wide array of shows, but my top shows definitely tracked my interests: news and current events, film, and TV.
Ryan Broderick's Garbage Day newsletter is already indispensable when it comes to understanding internet culture and explanations of what the hell is happening on most social media networks. He's fluent in internet; it makes him a great teacher.
But he's stepped up his game even more with a (relatively new) podcast: Panic World.
It's been going for about two months now, but I just fell into it like a rabbit hole today. Which is appropriate, since it's all about internet rabbit holes of the craziest sort.
The tagline with which he begins every episode describes the podcast as exploring the "moral panics, witch hunts, and viral freakouts that bubble up out of the weirdest corners of the internet."
I started with the episode on QAnon, in no small part because of yesterday's election and some of the cuckoo stuff that was going around online in the final days. And then I just couldn't stop myself. (Doesn't hurt that he interviews some of my favorites from other podcasts.) Caroline Calloway on being a woman the internet loves to hate. PJ Vogt on the Tide Pod Challenge (my goodness, I forgot that was an actual thing that happened). Ellie Hall on Kate Middleton conspiracy theories. Michael Hobbes on whether screens are frying kids' brains. David Sims on The Blair Witch Project.
Just a very thorough and entertaining primer on some truly crazy stuff that shouldn't really be a thing but totally is.
Not too long ago, I shared an episode of Malcolm Gladwell's podcast, Revisionist History, that was a preview of his new book, Revenge of the Tipping Point.
My rather off-the-cuff review is this: I liked it. I know, I know, I know the numerous qualifications that could go along with this, from social scientist types who say Gladwell oversimplifies things or that his schtick has run its course.
All of that may be true; I'm not an expert in any of the subject matter he discusses, and there are certainly times when I know there must be more nuance than a short, pithy story will allow.
But as an act of storytelling? An act of organization and structure designed to pull you in and keep you engaged as it ping-pongs off of seemingly random, disparate topics? Well, on that score, it's a rousing success.
Gladwell's voice as narrator is just the same as he uses for his podcast, and it's easy to see how and why, when reading his own material, he's so effective. It's quite impressive as just something to study, to strive for, to emulate.
I think one of my favorite things about this book is related to Gladwell's audio production company, Pushkin Industries. Instead of the same-old, same-old when it came to downloading the audiobook version of Revenge of the Tipping Point, I bought it directly from Pushkin.
It came to me simply as another entry in my podcast app of choice, Pocket Casts.
The rationale is simple; the technology is possibly even simpler. And I just loved the experience. Sure, I had to move things around and adjust things to make sure that my podcast app settings didn't mess up the listening experience (namely by organizing the chapters manually in my Up Next feed (since there were other podcasts already there), but otherwise, it was seamless.
Much like I thought the blending of the podcast form and audiobook form was novel yet simple in a previous book, The Bomber Mafia, so too was the logistical experience of actually getting the audiobook in the first place.
Couldn‘t have imagined how much joy this little dingus would bring me when I picked her out from the shelter in Oxford, Mississippi more than a decade ago now.
That short update was in fact a plea for help: Glass said that the show’s ad revenue had fallen off a cliff (the same one that many shows across the industry had already encountered), and it expected the coming year’s ad dollars to be a third less than what they were bringing in a few years ago.
As a result, they were starting a subscription model. Not that it would be required to hear the show at all, but one that was clearly calculated to help keep the lights on, to enable to keep making the show they always have.
None of this is particularly untrod ground for Glass and Co. I mean, This American Life started as (and still is) a public radio show, and one of the ways they grew in those early days was to record unique pledge-drive messaging that stations could use if they agreed to carry the show. Public radio is in the DNA of the show, and public radio lives and dies by pledge drives.
But it’s shocking to hear this podcast going this route. It’s such a staple; it’s the OG. For it to be feeling the sting of shrinking ad support feels like a bad omen for podcasts more generally. So here’s the link to the subscription option, cleverly branded “This American Life Partners.” If you love good storytelling and are in a position to help, consider supporting this one.
More than that, the revelation has made me think of whether I’m oversubscribed. (Spoiler: Yes.) Because that caveat at in the previous section was real: “in a position to help,” which has always been a thing, is more complicated now, not for the regular economic reasons like the increased cost of living across the board (though that, too) but simply the fact that so much of what we love is going behind a paywall.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m a strong supporter of subscribing to our favorite publications instead of bitching about how we’ve run up against their paywall. I’m not changing my mind on that: It remains necessary and a great use of your money.
But in this creator economy, so many of our favorites are now asking for money to make a living or simply subsidize the work they’re doing that we’re consuming. I’m thinking of namely podcasts and newsletters.
I love so many of these that there are truly too many to list, and that matters when you have to choose how much love there is to go around. When they say, quite reasonably as marketing copy goes, that you can give a month’s worth of support for the cost of a single fancy coffee. Can’t argue with it, and I can feel the knee-jerk desire to click “subscribe” every single time I hear that reasoning.
But I forget that every single one of them is making the same argument, and if I zoom out to consider what I spend on subscriptions per month in total, well then, that’s quite a different story entirely now, isn’t it?
In a roundtable of newsletter creators, Deez Links queen Delia Cai said, in an aside to a longer point: That's part of a whole other conversation about how much emails should "cost" and what they should provide in return. (The $50/year Substack norm feels so unsustainable in at least fifty ways!). She doesn’t say this lightly, as she was laid off from Vanity Fair back in May, brought back the newsletter, and started a paid tier for subscribers. I respected her take, despite the inherent contrariness to her own financial well-being, because she said what we’re all thinking. Streaming services (both movies/TV and music); publications (though fewer of us) in both digital and print (way fewer of us); apps that offer us increased productivity, digital storage space, or some other modern-life utility; podcasts; newsletters. The problem with many of these is the same: There are free alternatives, so why would I pay?
It’s often less out of necessity, and more out of a sense of allegiance. “I want to support this, even though I don’t have to for it to exist.” That’s the kind of support This American Life is counting on, and hopefully it works out for them. But if you’re a fan and hesitating to open your wallets, I feel you on this one. It’s hard to support everything we love.
I went to see Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit this summer in St. Louis. It was a relatively small venue and mostly a general admission free-for-all when it came to the standing-only main area. The show was, predictably, amazing.
Before the show, I’d been sitting at a bar just down the street from the venue when a couple sat just around the bend of the bar from me. I can’t remember if it was a tee shirt one was wearing or I simply overheard something they said, but in between sips I asked them if they were going to the show.
They were, and when I asked if they’d seen him before, I quietly assumed I’d have the better story to tell, namely the one time I’d seen him before had been at Red Rocks.
They were indeed impressed by that story; they’d not been fortunate enough to catch him there. But they’d seen him so many times this year alone that I was quickly brought up as a mere poseur when it came to my fandom.
The wife said she’d been to see him multiple times at the Ryman Auditorium back in my native Tennessee, and I said that I was pretty sure they were going to release another live album from those performances. She’d heard the same thing.
And now it’s here. Don't miss out on some truly great live versions of some of the best storytelling put to music.
That's essentially the premise of Cullen Hoback's new HBO documentary Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery. Satoshi Nakamoto's identity has been a mystery for as long as Bitcoin has been a thing, but Hoback's film may have cracked it.
From a Bitcoin truther point of view, I should be up front that I don't actually care that much. Not invested in it, don't particularly understand it.
But I do love a good mystery, and the film makes a compelling case that Peter Todd, one of the early contributors on the technical side of Bitcoin, is actually the mysterious Nakamoto.
I linked to this Kevin Roose write-up about the film because it answered for me a question I could have found elsewhere, which was: Why does this film feel so much like another HBO documentary about uncovering a mysterious internet figure (I'm talking about Q: Into the Storm) that also made a compelling case at its conclusion?
Well, the answer's simple: Hoback made that one, too.
How cool is this video of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s “Hurricane Hunter”?
Bumpy ride into Hurricane #Milton on @NOAA WP-3D Orion #NOAA43 "Miss Piggy" to collect data to help improve the forecast and support hurricane research.
— NOAA Aircraft Operations Center (@NOAA_HurrHunter) October 8, 2024
I didn’t even know this thing existed, so of course I had to look it up. It’s a Lockheed WP-3D Orion. She’s called Miss Piggy. (There's another plane called Kermit. Too perfect.)
Love everything about them. Read more about them here:
The lede from the Atlantic story tells you all you need to know:
As Hurricane Milton exploded from a Category 1 storm into a Category 5 storm over the course of 12 hours yesterday, climate scientists and meteorologists were stunned. NBC6’s John Morales, a veteran TV meteorologist in South Florida, choked up on air while describing how quickly and dramatically the storm had intensified. To most people, a drop in pressure of 50 millibars means nothing; a weatherman understands, as Morales said mid-broadcast, that “this is just horrific.”
Gladwell used his Revisionist History podcast feed to give the public a sample of the new project, in audio form. It, much like his recent book, Bomber Mafia, blends podcast and audiobook into a new experience, and it's a captivating listen. Whether Gladwell's voice is perfectly suited to the narrator role or I've just grown used to it, I can't tell, but I love it. And then he mixes in actual interview tape, just like a podcast, to the extent that I'm curious what it looks like on the page.
Whatever the result, it works. It just does. I mentioned before that I don't fully know what to do with all the Gladwell criticisms out there, because many of them strike me as a honest and principled. But the guy just tells stories in a way that I find utterly addictive. And maybe that's fine, as long as I don't take his simplified conclusions and parrot them as the conventional wisdom at cocktail parties. If I can maintain a bit of detachment from the grand conclusions of "This is the answer to how this works in the real world" and instead just let myself be swept up in the storytelling and interconnectedness of ideas, I think I'm fine. And you probably will be, too.
But I’d sort of declared Lewis bankruptcy after his most recent book, Going Infinite, was met with some rocky reviews. I don’t think a single one of them would have cut against those three descriptors I listed, as the critics’ complaints had little to do with the quality of the reading experience.
The book, about Sam Bankman-Fried and his crypto empire FTX, was being published right as the rest of the world was properly learning that the whole thing was a house of cards. And the reviews didn’t like the book’s framing or ultimately Lewis’s takeaways: There were many, many, many, many critical reviews.
And it sort of bummed me out. I sort of just let these conventional-wisdom takes be enough for me, without investigating it myself, despite a good friend, whose news judgment and literary acumen I trust, said, “No, no; it’s a good book, and I don’t think the criticism is all that fair.” I just passed on the book.
Lewis told the story in the first place because he knew Sean Tuohy from grade school; they were friends. He’s had some harsh things to say about Oher after the lawsuit was announced, and his reporting seems less than stellar at times. Further complicating it for me, my former boss is one of the lawyers representing Oher, and I don’t pretend that automatically makes his arguments true but there’s a part of me that can’t help but root for him, even more than I was already inclined to. But in rooting for him, I can’t help but feel like I’m vilifying Lewis in the process.
So I haven’t really engaged with his work. Until that Washington Post story, and it truly wowed me.
Emanuel Maiberg
