SCALES #18: idle idol idyll
Hello!
Last weekend I struck out to my favorite donut place in these parts. I had been itching to get out into nature more, so then I made an impulse decision to hop on another bus and head out toward the Middlesex Fells Reservation.
First I stopped by the Oak Grove Cemetery and its World War I memorial.
Based on my phone's map, it looked like the South Reservoir was a good goal for a short walk—a chance to admire the natural beauty of a body of water, readily photographable.
The first part of the trail was along a brook, with suburban backyards in sight to both sides. But then upstream the water pooled into a marsh, the backyards receded, I could hear birds (there were some ducks who came incredibly close on the way back!), and it seemed like I was getting the Nature I was looking for.
The ducks.
The environments around me changed in quick succession: open, marshy clearing; quiet woods; rocky outcropping. After picking my way back down Ram's Head Hill, I knew the reservoir should just be across a road and around a bend.
Looking back up the hill.
I got there, saw the water treatment facility and No Trespassing signs, and... realized my Walk In Nature was more of a constructed fiction than I thought.
The reservoir.
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Speaking of human and natural changes to the region, this GIF shows changes to the Boston shoreline over a longer timescale than the maps I linked to last week (h/t @urbnallen).
Some tough, powerful audio from Philando Castile's mother and friend in coverage of the Jeronimo Yanez trial and aftermath. A close reading of the dashcam video by a retired use-of-force training officer for the Minneapolis Police Department.
A lot of feelings, no joke, from the World Refugee Day Snapchat story—the immediacy of the format was pretty effective here.
Some debut episodes of new podcasts: Mogul and Ear Hustle. Based on the first episode of Mogul, I agree with Nick Quah's take, including that the set pieces are captivating and Song Exploder-y.
On Song Exploder itself, noted Christmas University Challenge competitor Gus Unger-Hamilton of Alt-J, sharing his love of digital keyboard sounds.
More musicians being excited about electronic tools in the latest Meet the Composer episode. Beyond the smart explanations of the music itself, the podcast's not-so-secret theme is creativity and artistic creation, explaining why more than any other podcast I scramble to punch out in my phone a typo-laden transcription of some nugget. This time, ideas from members of Matmos ("choose what level you make the work", "Contingency") and the one and only Laurie Anderson ("just get yourself some tuber [rubber (thanks autocorrect)] bands and a ukulele and just you know have a blast").
Lorde's new album has inspired some good music criticism: Jane Hu. Carl Wilson. Lorde as knowing master of the profile game.
Today in The Things You Grew Up With Will Never Disappear: I fully support the fact that New Coldplay (finally) rips off Very Old Coldplay (yep).
The first of Hilary Mantel's five (!) Reith lectures is available—she talks about history, fiction, private lives and public events.
"No shoes. The artist dislikes attaching her figures to a particular historical moment, and there’s no way around the historicity of shoes."
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"Vampire Weekend But The Vampires Are All Girls". Laughed out loud multiple times at Mallory and Nicole's list of all-girl cover band names.
Fascinated by the different graph structures of the branching paths in Choose Your Own Adventure books. (And I guess CYOA isn't dead!)
"For our present purpose, a triple homonym will be defined as three words spelled differently but pronounced identically."
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I am now totally convinced that Amazon Grocery Services is the plan.
"One worker said 1,700 iPhones passed through her hands every day; she was in charge of wiping a special polish on the display. That works out at about three screens a minute for 12 hours a day." A reminder that phones do not materialize out of the void.
Neural network guinea pig names: "Fufby", "Fuzzable", "Snifkin". (h/t @hautepop)
Future Twitter ethnographers will find this thread incredibly helpful.
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I read the abstract of the PNAS paper, I hoped The Atlantic science section would cover it, and... my prayers were answered!
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Tall ships in Boston Harbor.
—Adam