I’m shamelessly imitating the Recently idea from Tom MacWright as I’ve come to really enjoy seeing what people I follow are consuming and thinking. This was my first week back in the new year and it consisted of work meetings, planning, and a bit of brain dumping. I probably will adopt a monthly cadence for Recently posts in the future, but as I have a lot to share now and the next few weeks will be more heads-down work, here it is.

Writing

I managed three posts this year (not counting this one) on redesigning this website yet again with AI, reviewing a book on infinity by David Foster Wallace, and posting something on AI Model Collapse, as well as finally creating my first personal YouTube video.

Watching

One Battle After Another is the latest Paul Thomas Anderson movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and based loosely on Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland novel. It was a trip; definitely the work of a writer-director who can do whatever he wants at this point in his career. Visually it is gorgeous and the acting is exceptional, especially Leonardo DiCaprio, but that’s not really a suprise given he almost always delivers memorable performances. Another standout for me was Sean Penn, who plays Col. Lockjaw in the film.

Ultimately, this is a father-daughter story stretched over the landscape of modern America. I thought the opening 30 minutes was strange and hard to get into, but once the film picks up pace, it is memorable and at times laugh-out-loud funny. I wouldn’t say this was my favorite movie of the year, as many critics intimate, but it’s a treat to see something really well done that has something to say.

I saw Marty Supreme at the local independent theater in 70mm. Despite the cost and the hassle it’s still so much better to see movies in a public setting than at home. Chalamet is a truly gifted actor and his character here is fascinating despite being, ultimately, not that likeable. Then again, almost every major character in this film is shown demonstrating good and bad traits, so it’s tricky to cast judgment on any of them.

The overall pace is frenetic, as is often the case for Safdie brothers films. I can’t say I love this, but it felt a more restrained here than in, say, Good Time with Robert Pattinson. As with One Battle After Another there were quite funny moments mixed with violent and upsetting ones. One of the better films I’ve seen recently, but not one I need to see again.

A Year of Running: Commit to Consistency is a 1:43 ad from TrackSmith, an apparel company, but it’s a lovely piece of filmmaking: no words, just a runner doing the same route through the ever-changing year in my area of the world.

Reading

Cory Doctorow gave a talk recently on Pluralistic: The Reverse-Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI, outlining his current thinking around AI. Cory is the popularizer of the phrase enshittification to describe the current tech landscape and really makes the rounds these days. He gave a keynote at PyCon US last year, which I attended, as well as appearing on many podcasts and shows to share his thoughts.

Daniel Immerwahr, author of the excellent and unfortunately timely book How to Hide an Empire, wrote a searingly excellent essay last year in the New Yorker around attention and Chris Hayes’s latest book on the topic. I recommend reading it in full.

Some choice quotes:

“Besides, distraction is relative: to be distracted from one thing is to attend to another. And any argument that people are becoming distracted must deal with the plain fact that many spend hours staring intently at their screens. What is doomscrolling if not avid reading? If people are failing to focus in some places, they’re clearly succeeding in others.”

Is “People aren’t paying attention” just a dressed-up version of “People aren’t paying attention to me”?

The suspicion that all this is élite anxiety in the face of a democratizing mediascape deepens when you consider what the attentionistas want people to focus on. Generally, it’s fine art, old books, or untrammelled nature—as if they were running a Connecticut boarding school. Above all, they demand patience, the inclination to stick with things that aren’t immediately compelling or comprehensible. Patience is indeed a virtue, but a whiff of narcissism arises when commentators extoll it in others, like a husband praising an adoring wife. It places the responsibility for communication on listeners, giving speakers license to be overlong, unclear, or self-indulgent. When someone calls for audiences to be more patient, I instinctively think, Alternatively, you could be less boring.

Music

I’m an enormous fan of anything Chris Thile does and have been listening on repeat to Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol 2, which just came out. I’ve listened to Vol 1 hundreds of times now and have been salivating over this next release.

Related, the entire album The Goat Rodeo Sessions with Thile, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Stuart Duncan is amazing and I’ve been re-listening to that as well.