This might be the year you do that thing! I mean, every year could be the year, and this is one

I’m not a big music video person (even for songs I love), but I thought this one was perfect youtu.be/LCzPagUU-Tg?...

Frontier Airlines is asking me to bid for a seat upgrade — paying real money with no guarantee of any benefit. Gambling is truly everywhere

2025 has not been a great year. I made a few okay pieces of music, and the less said about work the better. But I’m ending the year with a new job and an ambitious list of music projects. In particular I’ve decided to write the libretto for my next short opera myself.

Once when I lived in Bologna (perhaps 2003), as I crossed the street, Romano Prodi crossed the other way. He was quite short

Someday I’ll arrive at a formulation that satisfies me of why, despite undeniable skill and productivity, and despite thoughtful, upworthy messages, Rockwell is still a bad artist….

Some decades ago I saw a bunch of Godard in the theater. I remember being impressed by Contempt, but I’m not sure what I’d think now. It’s pretty clear about misogyny, but not (as I recall) particularly against it (rather, analytical, as it is about stardom) youtu.be/Dqwv9XkHOpk?...

Famous composer who wrestles with how to carry on his style in a changing era, making great music out of the struggle for 15 years and then essentially retiring for 30

Seeing discussion of Katabasis on here, I read the first ten pages or so, and they were not well-written. First, at a level a little higher than spelling/grammar, there's redundancy ("profound, deep thinking") and some doubtful usage. ...

My mother, visiting our bachelor college apartment, getting up to help after dinner, turning around from the sink to ask, “Do you use soap?”

I’m not watching “Heated Rivalry”, but I see lots of posts about it. Have people remarked that the title is very genre — an obvious wink and yet somehow reserved, even Canadian? (None of the melodrama of “Fatal Attraction” or “Indecent Proposal”.)

The iconography is something (1930!). Under the tree, a bear and bull rampant, by a stock ticker, above children’s gifts. The ticker tape runs up the tree in swoops and swags — and the tree itself appears to be made of arrows rather than evergreen, and is potted in an empty soup can

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer Tiny Tim did not die, and I didn’t know what I was doing in London.

This book is indeed right up my street, and sheds light on some upcoming projects. Thanks to @chrisbrody.bsky.social

When Nobi makes biscuits, his face changes — eyes wide and far-seeing, as if down the corridors of memory. Once he settles down, the face relaxes into dignified self-satisfaction again.

For someone who grew up in LA and now lives in SF, this is an amazing story. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s much more seriously worked out than anything I’ve seen

"nature", when used as a vacuous placeholder, e.g. "due to the nature of X"

One of Emily Brontë's best. Three short stanzas, each evocative in itself, outlining a romantic story. www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52388/... #smallpoemsunday

As a kid I picked up an enthusiasm for genealogy and ancestors (mainly patrilineal). The Mavericks came over from England a little after the Mayflower; one was killed in the Boston Massacre; one was prominent in the Anglo settling/secession of Texas. ...

I did not realize that Beverly Pepper is @joriegraham.bsky.social 's mother -- until I saw a birthday post on one of the other sites

#1 for the whole year 1975 was Jaws, which remains solid fun; #1 for the week of my birthday was Three Days of the Condor.

I can’t help reading this as a rhymeless limerick, only a little more irregular than this model of the form: There was an old man of St. Bees, Who was stung in the leg by a wasp; When they asked, ‘Does it hurt?’ He replied, ‘No, it doesn’t, But I thought all the while ’twas a Hornet!’

Possibly the most sublime Roman fresco of a temple. The architectural detail of the spiky-topped wooden barrier, the painted relief in the pediment, & the offerings burning on the altar; it’s a symphony of observations. Archaeological Museum of Capri (no provenance) #FrescoFriday

I think about this often with Austen — even the best of the movie adaptations are costume dramas in every frame, where Austen herself gives little space to those details, and none in that spirit

I’m interviewing for programming jobs. Today I had two coding interviews (different companies). They’re relevant (since I do want work that includes hands-on coding), but highly ritualized. And yet they still leave me tired and jangly. Perhaps a silly movie is in order

I’m in a small arts organization that puts on concerts on a shoestring. I think I’m ready to move that we use plain text designs that we can do ourselves rather than AI-generated images that look like sci-fi book covers of the ‘70s.

How do I tag someone as “amusing when reposted, but a bit too repetitive to follow directly?”

Classic 18C parallelism in her dad’s letter on her birth, as if he were Gibbon or Johnson. It was in the air, though hardly ever so well deployed as she did

Wordlebot telling me my word is in the dictionary, but not in its own private dictionary: SPRUE is a valid guess, but it’s unlikely to be a solution based on what I’ve learned from playing Wordle.

If you see this, we IMPLORE YOU to post a picture from whatever device you're using without explanation.

“Efrem Minimalist Jr”. is perfect

I’ve seen a few ads (on FB and Insta) promoting 852 Hz tones to help with ADHD. I did get curious and listen to one. Takeaways: - Listening closely to something static is indeed calming - They cheated toward the end by thickening the tone to a fulsome chord…

Just ordered this! Had a Venmo gift looking for a worthy application, and this was perfect.

I’ve been enjoying They Live, but suddenly found it’s one of those movies where our hero kidnaps a woman for practical reasons, and she doesn’t seem to mind very much

I also find the suggestions are capricious around apostrophes — it may or may not remember common contractions, sometimes requiring them to be fully typed in. Horse divorce, fortunately, is not something I often have occasion to text

What actor’s facial expression in a movie/TV show will stay with you for the rest of your life? Not the image in the thumbnail — Sorvino is fine here, but it’s Leguizamo that stuck with me, just as we see him in the opening of this clip youtu.be/ZqR2T7bdm0I?...

Not on the same level, but at a showing of Rear Window at the Castro Theater, when Raymond Burr raises his gaze level with the camera (and with Jimmy Stewart's spy scope), the whole theater burst into applause

Hepokoski on Nuages includes some interesting quotes from Debussy on the inspiration, i.e. what it’s an impression of. They include the urban landscape and an unromantic boat. A bit like Monet, who was hardly all seastacks and lilies

I'm enjoying these. The slightly flat pigeons remind me of the even flatter pigeon of "Vern Blosum", the odd pseudonymous footnote of the '60s. (The "parody" was so "sly" that I can't really perceive it.) www.artnews.com/art-news/new...

Times New Roman is a font you choose to convey that you don’t care about fonts, ugly and inconsistent in itself by widely agreed to be adequate. Better choices will look like someone took time thinking about them. In other words, I partly agree with Rubio on something, and I need to sit with that

Actual bluesky challenge: post your favourite work of art from fifty years before you were born en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Squ...

Vance, a Trapper Boy, 15 years old. Photo by Lewis Hine. (Evidently "trapping" was a job in the mine.) www.loc.gov/pictures/ite...

you will be visited by 3 spirits

That half-century (1915-65) was amazingly fertile in art. Kind of meaningless to have a favorite, but this is what I thought of first:

I am actually pretty good at noticing errors in spelling and grammar. Figuring out a good fix for grammar issues is a somewhat different challenge

Movie you’ve watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Stars (Wars nor Trek), LOTR, or Marvel, Disney Animated or Pixar. youtu.be/_oZEJBYr4jI?... (maybe not six, but more than any other)

Snobbery like this does exist in classical music (no surprise). One opinion I have of the form OP was asking for is that Boléro is seriously good music, not just fun or good in certain aspects but rewarding full attention all the way through.

Standard stoppages in the wild nbmaa.org/exhibitions/... www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks...

This is Wilde’s “Requiescat”: poets.org/poem/requies... . Curiously unstable rhythm. Much of it can be read as dactylic, and almost all can be forced into that rhythm, with “comic” effect.