The downside of living in a city others come to visit is that it never feels like a good time to be a tourist. Yes, D.C. is lovely just walking around — flaneuring, if you will — but all those buildings around the National Mall are still worth visiting.
Which is to say, our tickets for a tour of the Capitol are booked. It was now or never, since this year will probably be our last in Washington proper.
I have seen many people sharing links to Maciej Cegłowski’s (excellent!) case against colonizing Mars.
Of course, Werner Herzog said it first, and more succinctly. Good luck with that, indeed.
Waking up at 6am on January 1st to assemble the kids' new toy — a “Farm-to-table” play kitchen which I heartily recommend Some major assembly required, but with the Bilt app it ended up taking significantly less than the 2 hours quoted on the box. — I realized that how we celebrated New Year’s Day was probably how some (most?) celebrated Christmas. But isn’t it better to start the New Year with gifts and good cheer rather than promises to yourself that you know you won’t keep?
In any case, this holiday laziness is why the list of lists below didn’t come out on the last day of 2022, as it was intended.
🍿 Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio: beautiful stop-motion animation with inexplicable changes to the original. What is it with del Toro and fascism? Still, it has easily become our household’s cannonical version of the story.
🍿 Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical was a lovely reminder of Tim Minchin’s work which I had, years and years ago, followed more closely but 3 children and one cat later have almost forgotten. Also, someone please give Emma Thompson an award for best acting under prosthetics.
Good to know I wasn’t the only one who thought Lex Fridman’s podcast was dull.
I tend to avoid Joe Rogan and knockoffs, and even get slightly upset when people tell me how “he made podcasting happen” (ditto with Serial, to a lesser extent).
This is the big one.
Last year, I set out to read at least 22 books, and gave my self a list. Things went better than planned: in addition to 19 of the 22 books from the list, I found time I attribute this to one thing and one thing only: waking up one hour before anyone else in the house. After all, who needs sleep? for 13 more.
In no particular order:
Dishonorable mention goes to Ministry for the Future, the only book I started this year without finishing because it read as an underbaked piece of propaganda. The only other book in recent memory which suffered the same fate was the loud, the insufferable, the too smart for its own good Catch 22, to give you an idea of my literary proclivities. They just weren’t for me.
Finished reading: Craft Coffee: a Manual by Jessica Easto 📚
Re-reading each time I change how I make coffee: from AeroPress (early 2010s) to a Moka pot (late 2010s) to an ECM Synchronika espresso machine (yes, a pandemic purchase) to, currently, manual pour-over with Ratio 8.
🍿 A Trip to Infinity started off strong: I can never get enough Steve Strogatz, and between him, Eugenia Cheng, and Moon Duchin the first third of the documentary focusing on mathematics was stellar. Then came the muddled physics and incomprehensible philosophy. Too bad.
We are only 6 months away from the 10-year (!?) anniversary of Vesper, an app that not only still works on iOS 16, but feels more at home there than on the iOS 6 it was made for. Kudos to @brentsimmons, Dave Wiskus and @gruber for seeing the future. Too bad iOS 7 overshot.
