The Musings
If you never watched the HBO miniseries John Adams, I regret to inform you that you missed out. I watched it with my dad while I was in high school. Paul Giamatti performs at the height of his powers and the story of revolution and governance unfolds splendidly.
There’s a scene in the last episode of the miniseries that I’ve had on my mind lately. It is below. Adams, now an old fogey, walks with one of his sons on the family farm and waxes poetic about the life he’s led, stating the following in tow:
I have seen a queen of France with 18 million livres of diamonds on her person, but I declare that all the charms of her face and figure added to all the glitter of her jewels did not impress me as much as that little shrub right there. Now, your mother always said that I never delighted enough in the mundane, but now I find that if I look at even the smallest thing my imagination begins to roam the milky way.
I’ve been trying to notice things more. Delight in the mundane. It’s so easy to get sucked into modern life and wake up at 33 without knowing what you got yourself into the past few weeks, months, years. There’s a poll down below that is related to this line of thinking and while I haven’t thought through exactly what I want to write about concerning it, I hope to write more soon about said poll. Please cast your ballot as you may. It’ll also help me figure how many people’s attention I actually have lol.
The Poll
The Rundown
Reading
“We Don’t Need a New Twitter” By Cal Newport in The New Yorker
I really enjoyed this article. The big-picture thinking around social networks and how they function in an algorithm-swamped world is significant to me. Things at scale generally, in my opinion, don’t work out in the long run. There’s a million little online communities thriving on various platforms around the world. Let them thrive. Who gives a shit about the hive mind of a place like, sigh, X or, yawn, Threads.
Watching
Oppenheimer, directed by Christopher Nolan in 70mm at The Music Box Theater
Finally got around to seeing one of the biggest movie events of the past few years. There’s really nothing to spoil if you know the story of Oppenheimer, although Nolan does his damned best to have a slight of hand reveal during the prestige of the third act. Robert Downey Jr. returns in kind with a performance worthy of at least being considered for an Academy award. Cillian Murphy will likely be nominated I imagine but I’m unsure if his performance will take the prize.
Baking
Chewy Earl Grey Sugar Cookies, recipe by Yossy Arefi in The New York Times
Writing
I have had this nascent short story in my drafts for some weeks. I turn it over in my head and I know what I want to say but I don’t know how to get there. There’s such a barrier between the thought and the typed out sentence that I find hard to scale. Anyway, this little section is just to say that I hope to sometime soon send a draft of a short story to you in this newsletter. If you’re intrigued, shoot me some encouragement. It helps.
Listening
Craig Mod’s Special Projects podcast companion. I cannot share it sadly as it’s for paying subscribers but you can learn more about his Special Projects project here.
The End
That’s all I got.
With love,
Rob
P.S. Pick up the pieces.