The Economics of Succession, Wisdom from Vonnegut, Writing Advice, etc.
In which I end up sharing probably too many media recommendations.
👋 Hi there.
🎓 Vonnegut didn’t write that absurd sunscreen speech, but he certainly had wisdom for college grads.
🌎 Visualization of what the earth has looked like, dating back 750 million years.
💉 What would our lives be without vaccinations? “Vaccines are likely the most important public health intervention of the last 100 years. They've saved over a billion lives.”
🎞 The New Yorker’s list of the greatest independent films of the twentieth century. “A counter-canon of masterworks by filmmakers who took control of the means of production.” A lot I’ve seen, some I’ve meant to and some I’d now like to.
📺 Everything you don’t really need to know about the economics of Succession. Fun read if you watch the show (and if you don’t, do).
🤘Podcast on the Violent Femmes’ self-titled album, which I mentioned a few weeks back as one of the greatest debuts of all time. Momentarily regretting not picking up the 40th anniversary reissue at Record Store Day last weekend, but listening to it on Spotify right now is helping. (See also: the tranceaphone.)
📈 Record sales (pun?) are soaring, but half of vinyl purchasers in the United States don’t have a turntable.
🎵 Willie Nelson turned 90 yesterday with Neil Young and Snoop Dogg, as one does. “Angel Flying too Close to the Ground” is a personal favorite.
💬 “Ya’ll” might not know this, but the use of the word actually comes from across the pond and dates back to the 17th century.
🦜 Parrots tend to be lonely creatures when not in flocks, so scientists are teaching them to Facetime each other.
🚘 Chinese automotive manufacturer Geely (Volvo, Polestar, Lynk & Co, etc.), is introducing JIDU, an AI-operated autonomous robocar in “a stark modern showroom designed to amplify the promise of an electrified and autonomous future,” where new vehicles will roll up upon purchase. (See also: why scientists are making faux-moon dust.)
🌕 iSpace, a Japanese company, aimed to be the first company to successfully land a robot on the moon this week. “It is likely its lunar lander crashed on the surface. Communication was lost with Hakuto-R moments before it was due to touch down at approximately 16:40 GMT on Tuesday. Engineers are investigating what happened.”
🏢 Japanese buildings shaped like the things they sell, because you needed to see a building that looked like a chocolate bar today.
📚 News from Metafilter: “In response to the growing number of libraries and schools books, both the Seattle Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library have made their complete e-book and audiobook catalogs available to teens and young adults anywhere in the US. ‘We believe in your right to read what you want, discover yourself and form your own opinions.’”
📖 In Stephen King’s On Writing (a cornerstone of my teenage years, along with the previously mentioned Book of Film, edited by Roger Ebert), he shared a list of books that had recently influenced him. “As you scan this list, please remember that I’m not Oprah and this isn’t my book club.”
✍️ Excellent writing advice from Carl Braun. “Most people write to sound smart when they should write to be useful. Communicating to sound smart lowers your potential for impact. The harder people have to work to understand you, the less they want your input. Writing to be useful means writing what you would want to read. Simple, but not easy.”
🛹 Interview with Dave Carnie, former Big Brother (where Jackass basically originated) editor-in-chief and current CREEM contributor. Let’s end with his thoughts on being a skateboarder:
“As a skater you learn self discipline. There’s no one telling you what to do. There’s nobody pushing you to land a trick. Nothing happens if you don’t learn eggplants today. Nothing happens to you if you don’t make a kickflip down stairs. It doesn’t matter, but you push yourself to do it anyway. When you have that sort of mentality, that drive, you can take that into any other discipline, any other industry, any other culture, and succeed because you learned how to do that through skateboarding. Anyone who was a skateboarder or embodies that spirit of skateboarding will have that skateboarding state of mind for the rest of their life.”
✌️Remember to keep the Hoping Machine running.
Love,
Luke
