#108 The songs the sirens sang
Logs. Guns. Libraries. Harmony.
Issue #108 The songs the sirens sang
3rd April 2024
This is my April Fools issue.
No, it's not - it's 3rd April.
APRIL FOOLS!
No, wait, that doesn't work ...
Rule of three
[Movies] Letterboxd
I've moved all my movie-related activity over to Letterboxd - a website that lets you rate, review and journal every film you've ever watched. Absolutely adore the UI on this thing, everything works so well. And the community aspect means I've already found loads of incredible recommendations from other film geeks. I've committed to posting a one line review of everything I see this year. If you'd like to follow my real time journey into cinema, find me at https://letterboxd.com/mrchrismead/ (and if you have an account I'll absolutely follow you back).
[Podcast] No Compromise
I haven't been this gripped by a podcast in years. Two reporters look into the recruitment tactics of a group of independent gun lobbyists and find a network of far-right activists and pressure groups who have co-ordinated methodologies. It's riveting stuff and absolutely essential listening for those of us with more progressive politics, wondering how far-right ideologies have seeped so thoroughly into the mainstream. And it just won a Pulitzer for audio reporting too.
[Language] Library of Babel
Prepare to have your mind blown. This website recreates Jorge Luis Borges' fictional Library of Babel - a near infinite universal library where every combination of characters and spaces are laid down in an uncountable number of books. What that means in practice is:
It would include everything: the minute history of the future, The Egyptians of Aeschylus, the precise number of times the waters of the Ganges have reflected the flight of a falcon, the secret and true name of Rome, the encyclopedia Novalis would have written, Borges' dreams and daydreams in the dawn of August 14th, 1934, the demonstration of Pierre Fermat's theorem, the unwritten chapters of Edwin Drood, those same chapters translated into the language of the Garamantes, Urizen's Books of Iron, the premature epiphanies of Stephen Dedalus that would mean nothing before a cycle of a thousand years, the gnostic gospel of Basilides, the song the sirens sang, the faithful catalogue of the library, and the demonstration of the falsehood of this catalog.
Everything - a poem you're going to write this evening, the ingredients on the side of your cereal box, the lyrics to I Wanna Sex You Up by Color Me Badd. All of it. The website limits the books to 3200 characters (including a handful of punctuation) and procedurally generates the content based on the location of the book in the virtual library. But you can genuinely look up any string of text.
Take a look (about halfway down this page)
Longform thoughts
I’ve been thorough a number of rough improv break-ups and they can be almost as anxiety-inducing as their romantic equivalents, so I’m keen to focus on ways of preserving harmony.
This week I answer a question about strategies to endure after the improv honeymoon is over.
Radio contact
This may be my favourite picture ever taken of anything.