The Total Solar Eclipe, Saying No, The Evolution of Mozart, etc.
In which this was hard to write today with all the sportsball going on and all.
🏀 Don’t think of myself as a huge sports guy, but found myself wanting to watch Detroit, Iowa and Tottenham today.
🌑 As you are likely aware, a total solar eclipse crosses North America tomorrow, “with parts of 15 U.S. states within the path of totality. Maps show where and when astronomy fans can see the big event.”
🔠 A single letter can make a big difference. Not sure “Clifford the Big Red Dot” could hold a kid’s attention.
✅ Like Nike says, Just Do It. “‘If you reject your own ideas, then the part of the brain that comes up with ideas is going to stop,’” he said. “‘You just do it and do it and do it, and you sort it out later.’” Quantity leads to quality.
🚫 Success means saying no. Learn how to do so.
📱Why we can’t truly have phone-free classrooms: parents. “‘When my dad texts and asks me how I am,’ another ninth grader said, ‘he gets worried if I don’t message back immediately.’ Her friend said: ‘My mom expects a text each class period so she knows what I’m doing.’ These examples are not exceptions. They happen every day.” Yikes.
📺 Hulu still exists as its own app, but is also part of the Disney+ app as well. Am I alone in thinking this is backwards?
🙈 Watched and was disappointed by Netflix’s Ripley. Constance Grady said it well. “[Ripley] is so boring that it feels like a waste of beauty — not to mention a waste of a more than capable cast. Andrew Scott, who has been so charismatic and emotive in Fleabag and Sherlock and All of Us Strangers, plays Ripley with a careful detachment, as if he’s been warned not to try to make the audience feel anything. Likable Johnny Flynn (Emma., Lovesick), in the less showy role of Ripley’s callow mark Dickie, has himself so reined in that it becomes difficult to understand why Ripley is so drawn to him in the first place. The spark between them that is meant to set the whole plot ablaze ends up feeble and barely visible.” With that said, it did inspire me to pick-up the novel, and remind me how good the 1999 adaptation actually is.
👓 Larry David’s Last Stand: “As the series finale of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ approaches, everything, it seems, has been building toward one of David’s most strongly held beliefs: that, actually, the ‘Seinfeld’ finale was pretty, pretty good.”
🦸 A copy of the Action Comics #1, a comic book featuring the first appearance of Superman, just went for $6 million. “Amazingly, this copy is the same grade as a copy of Action Comics #1 that sold for $3.25 million just three years ago.” When I was a kid in the early 90s, I owned a trading card dedicated to the issue, stating the value of a near-mint copy was $55,000.
🎹 The evolution of Mozart’s music, from age five to his death thirty years later. Spoiler: he was basically incredible by seven.
❤️ I will leave you with this haunting rendition of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” by Kurt Cobain, gone thirty years ago this week, and some words of wisdom from his journal:
1. Don’t rape
2. Don’t be prejudiced
3. Don’t be sexist
4. Love your children
5. Love your neighbor
6. Love yourself
Remember to keep The Hoping Machine running.
Love,
Luke
