Woke up at the crack of dawn, went downtown, answered some health questions, handed over a bunch of forms, and now for more waiting. Governmental bureaucracy is a certain sort of task-focused pleasure, which dispenses little drabs of dopamine for following byzantine rules and regulations. I don’t mind it so much as comment on it, observe it, see where the cracks are, and where another organization would lean into repairs to processes. At least, if their goals were increasing their customer base or lowering their friction. This is all friction. Potentially purposeful, but friction nonetheless.
Anyhow, steps 1-4 of (maybe) 7 are in the can.
Inputs
1: Caught The Creator on Hulu this afternoon. Beautifully constructed and with its own unique visual palate and styling, it was a lovely movie to watch, though a bit on the nose in its beats. John David Washington has really come into his own as an actor, but he has line readings in here that, with your eyes closed, you would swear were his father. Worth a watch, even if it isn’t striding over wholly new turf.
2: Also watched They Cloned Tyrone, which was much more original in voice, vision, and effect. Great efforts out of John Boyega, Jamie Foxx, and Teyonah Parris, who really stole the movie with a complex performance of a character that easily could have been one or two notes deep. From the blaxploitation touches and the satirical visual critique that refused to cross into caricature, to a dialogue that insisted on originality in choice and diction, I enjoyed it thoroughly.
3: Gabe of Penny Arcade in commentary on today’s comic, on the lie at the heart of AI art: https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2024/01/03/terminarter. He, much better than I could, for his wisdom and his position as a member of one of the most prominent artistic duos on the internet, elucidates his thoughts on the empty argument of AI evangelists, who are willing to ignore propriety, the true meaning of a commons, the agency of artists, and common damned sense, all because they’ve decided they want their thing to be Good when it is, at its very best, Complicated.
Projects In Progress
Things ascend and flow ever forward. Slow movement is movement. Forward is progress. May it ever be so.