A True Children's Library, Birdsongs, Moving on from Social Media, etc.

In which you've got nothing to prove, and should just enjoy who you are.

🚊 This 73-year-old, Japanese artisan has been crafting model trains for decades. Video probably won’t be for everyone, but it looked like a cathartic hobby to me.

📚 Author and publisher Dave Eggers just opened a library in San Francisco comprised solely of books written by children. “But these are not, for the most part, hand-made zines. They are high-quality paperback books, beautifully produced and published through the 826 Valencia network, which has grown into an international consortium of quirky spaces devoted to fostering a love of writing in children.”

🎥 Writer and director Wim Wenders and actor Koji Yakusho share their four favorite movies for Letterboxd. Their film Perfect Days was one of the best I’ve seen this year.

👩‍💻 Another new Twitter? Not the easiest task. “After all, we had witnessed X’s unraveling, as it turned from a genuine community space into an often venomous one. Why should we imagine Bluesky would avoid that fate? And more to the point: Why keep trying to recreate the internet of the past? Why not accept where we are and move on?” Gita Jackson makes a case for creating your own website, as opposed to social media (or Substack), and owning and controlling your own content. If only RSS had taken off, I will beat the drum that it is the best and most efficient way to read the Internet. If you ever want to learn about RSS, feel free to contact me.

🤣 A ten-minute video of actors breaking on Saturday Night Live.

🥁 The Chuck E. Cheese band will soon be no more. They were a low-rent Rock-afire, anyhow.

🕊️ What can we learn about human speech from the bird’s songs? “We often consider spoken language to be a feature that distinguishes humans from other forms of animal life. Brain research, however, suggests that other creatures — including certain birds — share some of our neural circuitry related to language.”

✍️ Read about the passing of a poet I had admittedly never heard of, Nikki Giovanni, via Austin Kleon, who shared this great quote of theirs. ““While I have always liked my career I have way more fun with it now. I've got nothing to prove, and I don't care what the critics say... A lot of people resist transition and therefore never allow themselves to enjoy who they are.”

❤️ Keep the Hoping Machine running.

Love,

Luke