My podcast diet has become stale. I work from home more, commute less, and have decided not to wear AirPods when others are around, With a family of five this means no more than 30–45 minutes in the early morning before anyone else is up. And those minutes are filled with the usual suspects, which continue to be fine, but they are also two elderly economists with similar views. Where’s the variety?
So, here is an aspirational list of things I will try out in 2024. Be warned: a few years ago I put Lex Friedman’s podcast on a similar list, and apologized profusely after realizing it was a good cure for insomnia and not much else. As always, caveat lector.
If the links above were not explicit enough, here are my actual regulars: ATP, EconTalk, Conversations with Tyler, with a sprinkling of The Talk Show and Dithering. They all feature prominently in years past: 2022 — 2021 — 2020 — 2019 — 2018 — The one where I took a break from podcasts — The very first one.
🍿 Klaus (2019) flew under the radar for us when it first came out, so kudos to the Netflix recommendation algorithm for resurfacing it for the holidays. It is a classically — and beautifully — animated family movie that’s not trying to be hip or edgy, and is all the better for it.
This time last year, Netflix scrapped the director’s follow-up project. Here’s hoping that Ember will find a new home.
“The Protagonist of an Endless Story” by Angel Rodríguez-Díaz is a 1993 portrait of Sandra Cisneros, whose 69th birthday was yesterday. It would have been even more striking had my iPhone not decided to paint the National Portrait Gallery’s teal wall blue.
“Typically the most important thing is not how you do the optimization but rather what you decide to optimize.” This is in regards to a school bus route optimization disaster:
The program — developed by graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — uses artificial intelligence to generate the routes with the intent of reducing the number of routes. Last year, JCPS had 730 routes last year, and that was cut to 600 beginning this year…
So, people thought you could eliminate — pardon, optimize — 20% of the routes without consequence. Don’t blame AI, which is nothing but an incantation used to make someone’s magical thinking a reality.
What kind of a wimpy autocrat has complete control of the media, no serious opposition, gives pre-election handouts left and right, but still needs to bus people from out-of-state to stuff the ballots? Serbia’s president, apparently. Maybe that’s why Putin hasn’t yet called to congratulate.
Three pieces from last week about the long-gone, the recently deceased, and the actively dying:
What a great year for the Internet!
(ᔥWaxy.org)
This morning’s Axios DC newsletter has a few words to say about the city’s political dysfunction:
Last Tuesday, after racing to Capital One Arena to counteroffer Ted Leonsis with Mayor Bowser, Council chair Phil Mendelson gaveled a hearing about school truancy two hours late. Truancy!
But of course, you already knew the place was a mess. It’s almost as if ineptitude had consequences.
The best newspaper article I’ve read in ages is also about government dysfunction. The Washington Post lays out in great detail all the ways in which much of D.C. is vulnerable to flooding, and some of the ways to overcome it, yet:
It is the quintessential story of how Washington works that none of these proposals has reached senior decision-makers. That’s because more than a dozen federal agencies own land and buildings there, each with its own congressional appropriation committee to please.
But that is just a wrinkle in a dissertation about climate change, urbanism and governance. Highly recommended.
🏀 Living two blocks down from the Capital One Arena, I am completely biased in thinking that the plan to move the Wizards and the Caps to Potomac Yard is bonkers. The slightly less biased Tyler Cowen shares my opinion, and for the same reasons. For what it’s worth, the summer spike in crime was just that — a spike — and with the winter months came the Downtown Holiday Market and 2+ patrol units per block, so the neighborhood is as safe as could be.
Side note: Tyler’s commenters underestimate how many visitors to DC go to a Wizards game just to have their selfie taken with the court as a backdrop. The Capitols may be another matter — they are actually good — but it always seemed to me that passers by account for a large chunk of the Wizards’ audience.
📺 Scavengers Reign (2023) was hands down the best six hours of streaming I saw this year. It’s Adventure Time for adults; Saga for television; Fantastic Planet for the 2020s; and, yes, all in the Moebius style that influenced Miyazaki’s Nausicaä… so much that it’s probably the first thing that will come to mind after seeing the first few scenes.
But Scavengers Reign is not a mishmash of those, but a new and distinct work all of its own, with a better soundtrack and better voice acting than anything that’s come before. Highly recommended.