This is such an incredibly heart-wrenching moment of cinema. Jackie Coogan's expression here is so affecting.

Being conscious not to move toward “we did it” complacency, but these kinds of milestones have happened in a few places over the last year, and it’s encouraging

This is craven

Hard to sympathize with Spotify here when they strike a pose of protecting artists

Just started listening to Alex Goldman's Hyperfixed podcast recently and this episode trying to recreate a beloved cake with Claire Saffitz is so good. Kind of a revival/crossover ep with the less problematic cozy-media people from 2020 (from the otherwise doomed Reply All and Bon Appetit).

Delightful to discover Vulfpeck has a video of Clapping Music on their YT channel:

Watched a video someone inside recorded of Alex Honnold waving to people at the top of Taipei 101 just before finishing and my palms started sweating five seconds in. Yikes.

Boris GoodEnough

Every year this part of the Grove entry on Amy Beach sticks out to me and some day I'll find the energy/time to track down where it comes from. It can't be accurate, right? Singing 40 tunes at age 1? Improvising alto lines before 2? Feels a little more than precocity!

Pretty good discussion that reflects my feelings of Stranger Things being a pretty mixed bag in its last season, though not really tainting the earlier seasons. Writers just seemed to mail it in a bit for fan service of some kind

“.. saying that the Trump administration’s policies had ‘shattered’ the confidence of donors and resulted in a 40 percent drop in ticket revenues. “ @nytimes.com #ETTD www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/a...

The latest numbers are in: Congestion pricing cut 27M car trips in 2025. Commutes got faster Streets got safer And business went up See more exclusive analysis - and feedback from 600+readers - in our latest collab with @upshot.nytimes.com Free link: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

This is like a Yes, Yes, No to assign to a grad “intro to musicology” course on the first day of class

House style guides will be the death of me.

Well that’s the most adorable thing

So much good stuff coming into the public domain!

The Man with More of a Comment than a Question

I love this cue from WALL-E, but listen to it and tell me you don't hear a little bit of Elman's SIMPSONS theme (at 1m40s, if you want to skip).

Listening to Sibelius symphonies as I write and was completely taken off guard by the excerpt from the 6th that plays when you open the engraving software. Almost dissociated for a moment.

The. Truth. ...though one of the reasons I've stuck with being a Germanist is because they're some of the best digitizers, in my experience. So much stuff that just lives on the cloud that I can't imagine more than me and two other people care about. But I don't ask questions about that.

I'm in the thick of a Robert Schumann research project and am constantly reminded of how one of the foundational scholars, Wolfgang Boetticher, was at best complicit as a Nazi, yet he's still cited *all over*. His political affiliation on its own is bad, but it also influenced his curatorship.

Will never not hear something goofy in my head when I read the abbreviation for Werke ohne Opuszahl

Everything old is new again

This morning, spent an hour following a citation chain for a primary source, ending with a 175 year old biography, which references the source but doesn't cite. One later article says the primary source is "unfindable." Now thinking abt how modern biographies can be oddly credulous of old sources.

This headline gave me flashbacks to the Twitter Christmas Chord Debacle (but this article actually makes sense and cites Philip Tagg)

This means the guy I root for didn’t get it, but honestly it’s been so wild to see IU do what they did this year, so this is fun to see.

ths information is in a memo from the JAMS Editorial Board that has been sent to Council & AMS Leadership. The memo is available to read here (drive.proton.me/urls/EBBSX54...) & I cannot stress enough how important I believe it is for everyone to read it

Broken clock and all that

Tubi is such a crazy streaming service. It’s like if the Criterion Closet was in a gas station

Somehow have never watched THE BIG SLEEP (1946) before tonight and was so relieved to go to Wikipedia and learn that everyone else found the whole thing v confusing, too.

The same headache that every home I’ve lived in has given me is the use of drywall anchors to mount towel fixtures (rings, hooks, rods, etc.). Find a dang stud, would you?

Georgia did their part. Everyone wins.

Sorry Yale, you guys will get Montana State next year.

In the tragic position of being happy that Texas Tech is winning sports because it benefits my team.

Bowl Games end. The Never Ending Pasta Bowl doesn’t.

My hunch about the universities capitulating is that the leadership assumes that in three years norms will return and they can walk back everything. I dunno if I believe all that.

Enjoying my people’s annual IP Parade, which expresses thankfulness for the intellectual property totems that ensure continuity of our social world.

Fabulous essay with so many links!

More and more often colleagues ask if I as a humanist use genAI and I always flatly and without flinching say, “No. Never.” Honestly, having it clean up an email or whatever, I don’t care if you do that. But this? I will never do this. Ever. I don’t care what the circumstances are.

take your pick of Jimmy Cliff songs to listen to in celebration of his life. it'll be a good one.

Have watched NOMADLAND probably six or seven times (I teach it) and never noticed this. Zhao directed ETERNALS, which came out the year after. Interesting!

“Schicki-Micki-Maus” is such a top tier idiom

Hannah Hidalgo hits a two with 1.9 secs left to give Notre Dame the lead over USC

Netflix’s IN YOUR DREAMS (2025) really hitting close to home with the plot line of professor parents moving their families to more remote places for jobs 😬

I’ve never given so many caveats and hedged so much on teaching as I did today in my film music class when I introduced against the grain readings. It’s so exhausting.

More trouble today when we were making Nashville number charts for “I Can’t Go for That” and dealing with its Aeolian/Mario cadences

Wikipedia editors again coming home with the most vital information

Thinking back on a paper at AMS-SMT about Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry. Fully half of of Qs were prefaced “I haven’t seen this, but…” and one even asked about the sets for the movie. Was baffled then, still baffled why you’d ask a Q if you know nothing about the subject. (There are no sets.)

Two weeks in a row Jeremiyah Love has a Heisman moment