Today’s photos taken in an attempt to achieve mindfulness, or whatever. www.flickr.com/photos/pe…
Today’s photos taken in an attempt to achieve mindfulness, or whatever. www.flickr.com/photos/pe…
And so we enter the Cold War Steve jigsaw endgame - the traditional monochromatic sky where every piece is the same colour. This is where the sunken cost fallacy really bites one in the arse. You gotta respect his artistic integrity, I guess.
My brain has registered it’s winter and therefore @coldwarsteve.bsky.social jigsaw time. Let’s fucking go.
I’m currently mainlining Rachel Bloom songs, started looking up reviews of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend in preparation for a rewatch, and found this interview with her in the New Yorker, ostensibly about her Netflix special but featuring some digressions that set off the “one of my people!” buzzer.
Did you feel that in your twenties, when you were developing “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”? Because you had success pretty early.
Yes, but I always felt not-cool. The first song I ever did was “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury.” It was, like, O.K., all these pop songs are about, I want to be with a hot guy dancing in a club. That’s never been me. It’s much more me to fetishize an old science-fiction author, because, honestly, that’s more my type. But then nerd culture got really cool in, I don’t know, 2006, 2007. Everyone was wearing those chunky nerd glasses, and so suddenly nerddom became the norm. It’s the reason Comic Con is now called “a celebration of the popular arts,” or whatever.
Are you saying, “You’re appropriating my culture when you talk about nerd culture”?
But here’s the thing, I’m not a huge comic-book expert. The thing that I was obsessed with growing up was musical theatre. So all of the other kinds of adjacent nerd cultures, when I enter into them, I love them. I think that the part of my brain that loves sci-fi and fantasy is the same part that loves musical theatre, because it’s all asking, What if? What if the world were like this? What if people sang? What if people had hot-dog hands? It feels like the same muscle to me.
But I don’t know. I have impostor syndrome with a lot of things. Like, I’m Jewish, but I was raised really secular. “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” is a very Jewish show; that is a combination of my experiences and the experiences of Aline [Brosh McKenna, the show’s co-creator] and other people. I wasn’t bat mitzvahed. My family didn’t even really celebrate the holidays. We did Hanukkah, and that was it. But I was still an other, because Jews were a minority in my town, so I felt different.
And, also, the way my brain works—when I get obsessed with something, it’s all I do. Right now, I’m doing a binge of “Everybody Loves Raymond.” I gravitate toward stuff that’s comforting sometimes, as opposed to the new show everyone’s talking about. I’ve always felt kind of like an out-of-touch fortysomething. So actually, coming into that is interesting.
What you’re saying reminds me of a chapter in your book, where you describe your obsession with musical theatre being completely alien to the kids you grew up with. And you decided, O.K., this is my thing. I’m going to get really good at it. And then you get to N.Y.U. to pursue theatre, and suddenly you’re with your kind of person, and so it’s not your identifying characteristic anymore. Is that a version of the impostor syndrome you’re describing?
Yes. There’s a part of me that’s kind of lone-wolfy, and I think that sometimes I used excuses, like, “Well, I’m just a musical-theatre kid, people don’t understand me.” But then when you’re around musical-theatre kids and they don’t understand you, what’s your excuse? It’s something I’m still working through. I mean, to quote “Dear Evan Hansen,” there is a little bit of me that always feels “on the outside always looking in.”
Niece asked for advice on SLR vs mirrorless cameras and I went on a long rumination about the psychological difference between the act of seeing being mediated by a tunnel of glass vs a digital screen and how this might affect the image, and I think I should start writing about photography again.
Laurie Penny has relaunched their newsletter.
I got a lot from Laurie’s writing back in the day so am looking forward to this.
The oldest forest in the world
In 2018 Charles Van Straeten’s palaeobotany team discovered the fossilised root system of a 385-million-year-old forest in New York State. Noah Kalina was sent to photograph him on site and has posted the subsequent article to his newsletter. Fascinating stuff…
My sister is emigrating (returning?) to the UK from New Zealand next month. Among the insane logistics they’ve decided to bring their cat. The very concept, not to mention the process, of shipping a pet from the other side of the planet is fascinating to me. I will have questions once they’re here.
I see the UK branch of the culture war has shifted to concern for the fate of family farms. it’s worth remembering that family farms are a direct consequence (if not the actual aim) of the Enclosure of the Commons and are basically hereditary feudalism. So yeah, fuck family farms.
My awakening re family farms came from the 2021 Farmarama podcast series Landed, where the heir of a Highlands farm with an interest in progressive regenerative farming looks into the history of his property, who it was taken from and what was lost in the process.
Why is London’s phone signal so bad?
A really thorough and accessible explainer of how your phone connects to the internet and what factors, physical and societal, might bollix that up. London is a perfect storm but this applies everywhere.
(via)
The Amazon Tax is when you buy a thing on the internet for, say, ÂŁ20 and it turns out to be shite, but you need the thing so you buy the decent version for, say, ÂŁ40, so it’s actually cost you ÂŁ60. You don’t have to shop at Amazon for this to happen. You just have to be a tired human in 2024.
The Counterculture Switch: creating in a hostile environment
I’ve really appreciated and enjoyed Baldur Bjarnason’s recent spate of posts and commend his writing to you. Here he points to lessons from how queer counterculture navigated persecution and pushbacks in anticipation of a reactionary right-wing resurgence.
The land of milk and honey was dismal
A look back, with context and interviews, at the groundbreaking 1964 film The Colony which gave members of Birmingham’s Caribbean community a voice on national television for the first time.
(via)
How to survive the broligarchy: 20 lessons for the post-truth world
Carole Cadwalladr often comes over like someone who has gazed into the terrifying, uncaring void and needs you to know how bad it is, and that’s mostly because she has. But this is remarkably measured - a calm, constructive fury.
A humorous illustration by Darren Cullen. (via)
Point Nemo, the Most Remote Place on Earth
A nice long read about the furthest point from land in the Pacific, and the people obsessed with it. (via)
Tickets for Caption 2025 are on sale.. Back in the 1990s early 2000s Caption was the annual gathering for self published comics and zine weirdos in the UK and a very important part of my life. I’m intrigued by this revival and have bought my ticket. See you there?
Birmingham’s composting project, Compost Connections, revamped their website and I copyedited the manifesto so much they’ve credited it to me, which is nice. Sidebar / scroll down to Changing Culture through Compost. #permaculture #composting
Saw Megalopolis, which I enjoyed mostly for the audacity of the thing. I was really struck by how operatic it was. Coppola’s uncle was a big name in opera and you can see it in the overblown, heightened, theatrical showiness. That early scene on the gantries, and the chorus nature of the crowds.
It’s not a great film, probably not even a good film, and the politics are nonsensical, but I think it holds something interesting together. I suspect I’ll be thinking about it a lot over the years.
You know how when photography freed painting from the need to be representational and it all went a bit batshit crazy? I’m looking at the catalogue for Breakdown Press, an indie comics publisher, and wondering if they same thing will happen / is happening to book publishing.
How to make your phone go darker
For those who read their phone in bed to keep the brain demons quiet - there’s an iPhone accessibility function called Reduce White Point (similar for Android) which makes it properly dark.
Accessibility settings are a goldmine (which is a bit of an indictment…)
How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities
The summary here would be “you don’t hate self-driving cars, you hate capitalism, and self-driving cars.”
Not Just Bikes give a thorough breakdown of what is to come, what the historical precedents are and why it’s not inevitable, in a 1 hour video essay.
Coupla rabbits for ya.
