a writer's notebook
Taking a moment to look back on my mark-making here recently and pick out the pieces I thought worked better than others, mostly for my own consideration going forward.
bookofjoe: Raymond Chandler & Ian Fleming in conversation (1958)
inc. transcript of the conversation
May 14, 2024 at 04:25PM
Comments closedMichael Wood · A Little Bit of Real Life: Writing with Godard
“Proust and Godard, in Anna Shechtman’s words, become ‘the memory-writers of their respective generations’. Paul Valéry, to Ludovic Cortade, seems to have been eavesdropping on conversations in the Cahiers office when he asks (in 1928): ‘What should we be without the help of that which does not exist?’ And we may all be writing along with Godard when he asks Anne-Marie Miéville to read the following phrases from Charles Péguy’s Clio, evoked for us by Daniel Fairfax and subtitled ‘dialogue between history and the pagan soul’:
‘I need a day to write the history of a second. I need a year to write the history of a minute. I need a lifetime to write the history of an hour. I need an eternity to write the history of a day. One can do everything, except the history of what one does.’”
May 13, 2024 at 06:16PM
Comments closedHead boy; How André Breton policed a movement for artistic freedom
‘Finally, at a benefit gala at the Grand Central Gallery in New York in April 1917, Arthur Cravan was set to deliver a lecture on “the Independent Artists of France and America”; having sunk too many pre-show drinks with (here they are again!) Duchamp and Picabia, he instead swore at the audience, did a striptease, waved his cock around and was promptly arrested. Cravan was a one-man awkward squad: painter, poet, provocateur, publisher, critic, hoaxer, athlete, amateur diplomat, dandy, draft dodger, merde-stirrer, tango dancer, early tattoo adopter, professional loose cannon. He advertized one performance promising that it would end with his suicide.’
May 12, 2024 at 07:37PM
Comments closedPulsed plasma rocket (PPR): Shielded, fast transits for humans to Mars
“Howe Industries is currently developing a propulsion system that may generate up to 100,000 N of thrust with a specific impulse (Isp) of 5,000 seconds. The Pulsed Plasma Rocket (PPR) is originally derived from the Pulsed Fission Fusion concept, but is smaller, simpler, and more affordable.
“The exceptional performance of the PPR, combining high Isp and high thrust, holds the potential to revolutionize space exploration. The system’s high efficiency allows for manned missions to Mars to be completed within a mere two months”
May 02, 2024 at 07:14PM
Comments closedImportantly, these cursus monuments are clearly aligned with burial monuments in the landscape, as well as the rising and setting sun during major solar events such as the solstice.
According to Dr. O’Driscoll, “This may have symbolized the ascent of the dead into the heavens and their perceived rebirth, with the cursus physically setting out the final route of the dead, where they left the land of the living and joined the ancestors beyond the visible horizon.”
Well, the time is never found, quoth Ms Cameron; it can only be made. But it is also the case that habits must be broken or (re)built one at a time…
When you are sitting there looking at an individual tweet, watching youtube video, or looking at an Instagram post, ask yourself: “What About This Excites Me?“.
The question I’m finding, serves as good jumping off point to becoming more conscious of about the engagement with the media I’m consuming. This question helps me immediately identify whether my engagement is driven by genuine interest or merely habitual scrolling.
Comments closedThe epic may go to the origins: the archetypes of thought, emotion and spiritual desire, and dissolve them in the present. The sensuous, contemporary life, seen from the perspectives of both past and future: film. Like music, the cinema is experienced as a continuous, live process of energies. It is conceived and best remembered in a flash, a composite whole.—Kumar Shahani, Film as a Contemporary Art
David Lynch Looking to Make Animated Film ‘Snootworld,’ Pitch Rejected by Netflix
David Lynch has come out of hiding and is telling Deadline that he’s hoping to find backers for an animated project titled “Snootworld,” even if Netflix recently “rejected” his “fairytale” pitch.
Apparently, in recent months, Lynch has been “quietly” trying to find backers to finance the project which he’s co-scripted alongside Caroline Thompson (“Edward Scissorhands”).
April 28, 2024 at 11:03PM
One Commentwww.dw.com – German far-right coup plot trial to begin
The first of three trials linked to a far-right coup plot begins in Germany on Monday, with the defendants accused of preparing to commit high treason and belonging to a terrorist organization.
Comments closedAll the suspects, part of the so-called “Reichsbürger” movement, were allegedly plotting to overthrow the German government. The Reichsbürger, or “citizens of the Reich,” reject Germany’s post-war state, claiming it was installed and controlled by the Allied powers who won World War II.
April 28, 2024 at 07:44PM
Comments closed“From the “Big Science” of Bell Laboratories to the esoteric world of séance chambers to university media labs to neighborhood makerspaces, places we call “labs” are everywhere—but how exactly do we account for the wide variety of ways that they produce knowledge? More than imitations of science and engineering labs, many contemporary labs are hybrid forms that require a new methodological and theoretical toolkit to describe. The Lab Book investigates these vital, creative spaces, presenting readers with the concept of the “hybrid lab” and offering an extended—and rare—critical investigation of how labs have proliferated throughout culture.
