Weekly Occurrence #130
The Birth Lottery, Monogamy Scale, Rage Checking, etc.
🐶 Herroooo,
🙏 Rest in peace to James Van Der Beek, who always seemed like a completely genuine and eternally optimistic dude. And also, Bud Court, part of some truly wild films in the ‘70s, and later appeared in Dogma and The Life Aquatic. Wes Anderson has gotten a million great line readings in his work, and I think Cort’s “We fuckin’ stole it, man” has to be towards the top.
📖 Currently Reading: Crumb, by Dan Nadel.
🎻 Vivaldi’s Four Seasons on original baroque instruments.
📉 On the total decoupling of “consumption” from “fandom.” “We are building an entire ecosystem—festivals, advances, touring routes, and brand deals—on a foundation of fake math.”
“Why does Artist A have 1 million listeners but empty venues? Because ‘listeners’ in 2026 are rarely active participants. They are casualties of the algorithm.”
🌎 Take a spin on the globe and play the Birth Lottery.
🙋 Does anyone use Day One (premium or unpaid) or Apple Journal? Any opinions? Feel free to leave a comment or respond to this email.
💌 Just a reminder that subscriptions, which contain all of my weekly essays, are on sale for only $25, now-my birthday, March 2.
🕹️ A history of Super Mario Bros., which revived the North American video game after an crash, defined the platformer genre, and established Nintendo as a dominant global force in gaming. Possibly the most important game of all time.
😡 Check and see what posts and articles are designed to make you feel rage.
🤬 Happy Birthday to Charles Darwin, one of history’s great haters.
🦫 On the Monogamy Scale, humans rank somewhere between meerkats and beavers.
🧅 Peter Askew writes about how he ended up building an online business selling sweet onions, a venture that began unexpectedly after acquiring the domain vidaliaonions.com.
✌️ Have a great weekend, and Happy Valentine’s Day. Keep the Hoping Machine running and your sunny side up.
Love,
Luke
