Culture – Page 26 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Sunday Morning Reading

Imaginations run wild when the grandkids come to visit grandpa’s house.

Dreams fill our imagination or sometimes vice versa. Especially when there are young kids around. This week’s edition of Sunday Morning Reading is a smaller list than most given that we’re on grandparent duty, but it should pique your imagination nonetheless.

As mentioned, we’re babysitting the grandkids this weekend. And so it’s only appropriate to kick off this edition of Sunday Morning Reading with The Dollhouse and it’s Discontents by NatashaMH.

With visiting grandkids comes a revist to the land of vivid imaginations. Watching the older one explore grandpa’s house and turn discoveries of the mundane into new found adventures may not approach hypherphantasia, but it’s enough to blow one’s mind. Speaking of, check out David Robinson’s ‘Like a Film in My Mind’: Hyperphantasia and the Quest To Understand Vivid Imaginations.

Speaking of dreams and imagination, Daniel Bessner has a great piece called The Life and Death of Hollywood. The dream factory might be going through some nightmares.

As our world seems both full of imagination and fraught with fear about Artificial Intelligence, Benedict Evans goes Looking For AI use-cases.

Ever wonder how the Internet keeps us connected around the globe? Check out Josh Dzieza’s report for The Verge about the folks who keep undersea cables maintained in The Cloud Under The Sea. Imagine that.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Sunday Morning Reading

Silver linings, taking stock, a revival of the Avant-Garde, and the future of chocolate all in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading to Share

Weekends used to be for taking a breath. That seems so long ago it’s tough to measure it conventionally as it somehow sadly just slipped away. Even so, there’s still time to share some Sunday Morning Reading.

Artificial Intelligence remains on the tip of all the digital tongues these days, though it’s yet to show any real promise that I’ve seen. Except for those who got in early on the cash grab. Steven Levy has an interesting piece, Tech Leaders Once Cried For AI Regulation. Now the Message is ‘Slow Down.’ Sounds like the cash isn’t as easy to grab as much as it used to be.

Speaking of AI, Chris Castle has an interesting piece on Music Technology Policy called Has The Ship Sailed On The Myth of “Responsible AI”? I’m not even sure it ever qualified for myth status, but whatever it is, that ship is out of the harbor. Hat Tip to Stan Stewart.

Kyle Chayka thinks The Dumbphone Is Real. This comes as so many blame smartphones for the decline of civilization among other smaller sins. Call me when every company in the world no longer begs you to pay your bills online, you can reach your doctor’s office via a phone, or tech companies (including those that make dumb phones don’t put you through hell trying to get techncial support from a person. I’ll take that call on my smartphone.

Most things get recycled. Including art movements. Helen Shaw takes a look at one such revival/remount in The Avant-Garfde Is Back On The Launchpad about the Wooster Group’s remounting of Richard Foreman’s Symphony of Rats.

Jamelle Bouie’s When Politicians Invoke the Founding Fathers, Remember This is interesting. First, because the title changed from when it first appeared in The New York Times. Originally it was The Founding Fathers Don’t Have the Answers To Every Question. I wrote about that here. My points remain, so does Bouie’s (which are excellent). The headline writing still suffers.

Richard Stengel suggests that 2024 election coverage should be free and out from behind paywalls. He makes a good argument in Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls.

One of my favorite writers, NatashaMH gets quite poignant and, protestations aside, quite brave in doing so, in The Distance Between a Breath And Sadness. I think we should all learn how to better measure that distance.

David Todd McCarty uncharacteristically goes Searching for Silver Linings.

And to close things out on a bitter sweet note, Isable Fattal takes a look at The Future of Chocolate. It’s a summary for articles about the future of chocolate as she tells us to savor our favorites whlle we can. Apparently, yet another in a long line of sweet life things where we need to measure the difference between a breath and sadness because there may not be a silver lining.

Sunday Morning Reading

The world seems a bit crazier each week when the calendar flips to Sunday. In the lead up to a ‘sun eating’ total solar eclipse perhaps a bit more so. Don’t gamble on things settling down after it passes. Regardless, here’s some Sunday Morning Reading to share.

According to Bertrand Russell “fear is the main source of superstition.” That may well be true. David Todd McCarty takes a look at The Disparity Between Fear and Progress.

Kyle Orland in Ars Technica tells us that Google Might Make Users Pay for AI Features in Search Results. I can’t imagine anything less intelligent.

Speaking of AI, NatashaMH wonders Will We Ever Be Ready for the Future? Have we ever?

Getting back to creativity in the real world, textile artist Minga Opazo explores being confident, finding solutions, and balancing research with your artistic practice in Engaging With The World In Your Work. Hat tip to Stan Stewart.

On the politics beat, Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski of ProPublica take a look at what appears to be another in a long line of Trump scams, this time with his last minute bond bailout. Ethical concerns abound in Trump’s Lawyers Told The Court No One Wold Give Him a Bond. Then He Got A Lifeline, But They Didn’t Tell The Judges. Too bad ethics don’t matter much anymore.

One thing about the political beat is that most of what we see and read is re-packaging things most of us already know. Details do matter, but not after the orange bull has wrecked the China shop. Lachlan Cartwright tells us What I Saw At The National Enquirer During Trump’s Rise. A too late, but good read.

Our Entire Society Is Becoming Addicted to Sports Gambling says Alex Shephard. I’m sure everyone saw this coming once the Supreme Court gave gambling the go ahead. Don’t forget, someone paid off Justice Kavanaugh’s gambling debts as he was being groomed for the bench.

To close things out, here’s a bit of history about solar eclipses from Leah Sarnoff in ‘The Sun Has Been Eaten’: Inside The History and Mystery of Total Solar Eclipses.

Slam! Destroy! What’s With This Boring Bullshit SEO Headline Writing?

Click bait headline writing has become so ever present, overused, and tired that it has certainly lost all meaning to anyone except the chronically bored or the algorithmically programmed.

Whether it was “Pow!” or “Bam! Zoom!” it was usually the preface to “Right in the Kisser!” That’s what Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Cramden would exclaim to his wife Alice in The Honeymooners when she got under his skin. For some reason SEO experts think we’re attracted to this kind of cartoonish, wrestlemania-type of violence and have slobbishly skewed that assumption into the seemingly never ending stream of headlines saying “So and So Slams So and So” or “So and So Destroys So and So.” Internet publications and ad mills have followed the gravy train right along. “Rips,” “blasts,” and “bashes” also seem popular.

This type of click bait headline writing has become so ever present, overused, and tired that it has certainly lost all meaning to anyone except the chronically bored or the algorithmically programmed. As lazy as it is, I guess it works. Which is not only a sad commentary on humanity but a sadder one on algorithms and the SEO industry.

I mean where’s the creativity? Why not use “lambasts,” “harangues,” “admonishes,” “berates,” “objurgates?” Or for those with syllabaphobia how about “dress down,” “haul over the coals,” “lays into,” “lace into, or “slag off?”

And just imagine how many of those boringly inept and inutile headlines are being fed into AI training engines.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Problematic 3 Body Problem

I both enjoyed and was ultimately left frustrated by 3 Body Problem, the Netflix adaptation of Liu Cixin’s sci-fi novel The Three-Body Problem. Thanks to fellow Mastodonian @RickiTarr I was finally able to put my finger on the source of my frustration.

I both enjoyed and was ultimately left frustrated by 3 Body Problem, the Netflix adaptation of Liu Cixin’s sci-fi novel The Three-Body Problem. Thanks to fellow Mastodonian Ricki Tarr I was finally able to put my finger on the source of my frustration.

Set aside the twists and turns through physics, politics, battles with cancer, romance, and everything else this story throws at you. The fundamental fight focuses on humans who understand that an alien race is coming in 400 years to wipe out our civilization. The aliens are doing so to save their own.

Given that we’re a species that can’t deal with more immediate threats currently facing us in far closer futures it’s hard to imagine trying to marshall the solidarity and resources to try and stave off a threat 400 years in the future. And that’s not even the problem in the title.

There’s not too much discussion of that in the show. Which is probably a good thing for how the storytellers want to unfold their story. But it puts us at a remove that left me and my wife joking throughout the series that Netflix has 400 years to unravel this tale.

Once the alien threat is revealed to all there are the usual sci-fi tropes about how those under threat deal with all such threats, but things quickly focus back on the main characters and their attempts to try and change what’s coming. As far as this adaptation is concerned everyone panics, reacts and then essentially shrugs and leaves it to a group of smart guys and gals to figure out.

I kept waiting for the 3 Body Problem metaphor to manifest in main character chaotic orbits as their arcs developed, but their orbital paths were all too damn predictable to cause the sort of friction that might have ignited the story, much less take hold with any metaphorical meaning.

As I said in the beginning I took some enjoyment from the experience. Some of the individual threads were captivating in and of themselves, but ultimately not enough to recommend the whole.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Baseball Kicks Off Today

Major League Baseball kicks off today. Remember every team wins 60 games. Every team loses 60. It’s happens in the remaining 42 that count. #baseball

The 2024 Major League Baseball season starts today. Well, sorta, kinda. The Dodgers and the Padres played a couple of games last week in Korea that are considered regular season games. Except where a few scheduled games already rained out, the rest of the MLB season kicks off today.

Here’s hoping for good games throughout the 162 regular season. But remember, every team wins 60, every team loses 60. It’s what happens with the remaining 42 that matter.

Stocks, Shoes, and Bible Bunkum

A fool and his money are soon parted the saying goes. That’s obviously an understatement that didn’t come close to anticipating the gullibility of large swathes of the American public. There are obviously flocks of fools out there begging to be fleeced by this conman-in-chief Donald Trump. In the last few weeks, supposedly facing financial peril due to the increasingly large legal fees and judgments against him, he’s managed to roll out sales pitches for trashy shoes, launch an IPO for his solipsistic social media network, and now bibles. I just don’t get the fascination with throwing good money after such bad bunkum.

It makes you wonder if all of these folks somehow drank Trump branded water or ate Trump steaks at some point in their lives that contained some sort of additive that bound them to him in some weird way. That makes it sound like bad fiction, but I just find it hard to believe that there are enough minutes in any given day for this many suckers to be born.

Sure, some folks are going to make some money from the Truth Social stock deal. Many more will lose their shirts. I imagine those Trump bibles will one day get passed down through a few familes here and there. Everyone needs a door stop or two. I can’t comment on the shoes, because there’s no rational excuse for anyone who thinks that’s a remotely attractive way to spend money or adorn their feet. But the conman who owns the courts, bilks his creditors, and gives lie to the concept of shame, just keeps on conning and his flock keeps lining up to be sheered.

If we saw any or all of this in a movie or TV show most would change the channel. But then Reality TV is how this whole thing kicked off in the first place.

We are not serious people. But this guy is a serious serial shyster.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

The Lehman Trilogy Diaries: A Powerful Bond Memorialized

Powerful bonds and fast friendships get formed all the time when you’re working in the theatre. There’s an intimacy in the work that sometimes transcends and envelops the work that needs to be experienced to really understand. It doesn’t happen all the time or on every show. Sometimes it’s just a job. But when it does you treasure it, because you know it’s rare.

Our recent production of The Lehman Trilogy was one on the rare ones. And so was the bond that formed.

This past weekend, the three marvelous actors, Michael Gravois, Kevar Maffitt and John Maness, along with his wife Ashley, journeyed north from Memphis to visit me in Chicago. It was a complete and total surprise, aided in no small part by my lovely wife, Thomasin. I mean they got me. Surprise successful. Emotional in every sense of the word. But then, they’ve been surprising me ever since rehearsals began. It was a magical weekend reunion of a magical moment in all of our lives.

Of the many weekend highlights was Michael bestowing a beautiful gift to each of us. Michael is not just an incredibily talented actor, but also a gifted mosaic artist. I’m still finding it difficult to put into words the my experience during this show, so I’m going to excerpt and quote from Michael for the rest of this story:

They may stand independently, but they belong together.

…the week after the Lehman Trilogy closed, I was feeling very melancholy. I began the process as ONE person. One singular person. But over the course of our rehearsals, especially during the week of the snowstorm, a time when the city shut down, four singular individuals decided to brave the elements in order to tame this beast of a show, and I no longer felt like one singular person. I felt like ONE in the plural sense. It was as if we were meant to be together. During the run of the show I felt like a cog in the machine and like the machine itself, both at the same time. We breathed together. We moved together. We thought together. And make no mistake, there WERE FOUR people on that stage. At no time was Warner not with us, even though he was miles away, even though the audience couldn’t see him. For the rest of our lives, no matter where we are on this planet, we may exist as four singular individuals, but at one time we were meant to be together. So I was thinking about this concept of singular and plural oneness, when I remembered this mosaic that I made over twenty years ago. It’s been sitting in my garage all these years, waiting to be framed. I made it with the intention of selling it as ONE mosaic. It was four mosaics, but it was meant to be together.

…we’ll know that at one time, it was intended to be part of ONE group. And this will always be true. As long as these mosaics exist, even after we die, people will look at them as singular mosaics. But somewhere on this planet, three other mosaics will be out there, forever connected to it.

It’s a beautiful gift, a beautiful memory, and a beautiful bond.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Sunday Morning Reading

It’s a Sunday morning of a somewhat lost, yet restorative weekend. Simultaneous with spring daffodils starting to bloom, the cast from my recent gig, The Lehman Trilogy, made a suprise trip from Memphis to Chicago to visit for the weekend. Made we think and feel deeply. Made me laugh. It was glorious. Bonds don’t get any deeper. I needed that. That said, and still recovering, here’s some Sunday Morning Reading to share.

First up David Todd McCarty is searching for the answers on why we do the things we do in Frittering Away What’s Left of Eternity. Terrific piece with no frittering. Resonated with me when it was published earlier this week. After this weekend it resonates with stronger vibrations.

Radley Balko delves into The War On the Woke in an excellent piece The War on the Woke Trumps the Truth for Heterodox Thinkers.

Sarah Jones takes a look at The Exvangelicals Searching for Political Change. I think she coined “Exvangelical.” Regardless of the label credit, its meaning sticks.

Jim Sciutto sees current global tensions as a 1939 Moment in his new book The Return of The Great Powers. Russia, China and the Next World War. I’m looking forward to reading it. You should too. In the meantime, David Smith talks about Sciutto’s book in ‘A 1939 Moment’: Jim Sciutto On Russia, China and the Threat of War.

Once a teacher always a teacher. I grew up in a family of teachers. NatahsMH in The Blind Leading the Blind recounts her experiences of teaching young ones what it’s like to experience being disabled for only an hour. I’m not talking comedy, but here’s the punch line: “And you experienced being disabled for one hour. Imagine a lifetime. Now go design the world a better, smarter place.”

It’s been 10 years? On the anniversary David Pierce wonders Who Killed Google Reader? I remember that death. The internet remains, but there’s a hole left by it.

Tampering With Words

This cracks me up. The NFL is investigating whether or not there was tampering between its teams and potential free agents. Of course this tampering comes outside of the officially condoned “Legal Tampering Window” the NFL allows prior to free agents being able to sign with other teams.

The Oxford dictionary defines “tampering” this way:

1. Interfere with (something) in order to cause damage or make unauthorized alterations.

2. Exert a secret or corrupt influence upon (someone).

Sounds bad. I’m not sure prefacing it with the word “legal” softens it as much as some lawyers thought it would.

My reaction isn’t about the monkeyshines that happens when players and teams are trying to one up each other. That would be akin to being shocked if there was gambling going on in a casino or in NFL locker rooms. All’s fair in love and war and apparently in billion dollar businesses that can tamper with language in ways that only a lawyer can love.

Just who do they think they’re fooling?

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.